


The Space Between Feathers

by thegirlgrey



Category: Captain America (Movies), MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers Family, BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Phil Coulson, COULSON LIVES!, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, Dorks in Love, F/M, Marvel Universe, Protective Steve Rogers, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-27 15:26:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 60,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1715504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlgrey/pseuds/thegirlgrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Darcy wanted was 6 college credits and her iPod back.</p><p>(That's what she wanted, but not what she got.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was just something that I wrote and left to collect dust after the Avengers came out. Things don't make sense, don't follow the timeline, and Darcy has a bit of genius in her. Be warned: this is going to be a slow burn, drag it out kind of fic.

When three black SUV’s pull up outside of the lab, Darcy doesn’t really have a reaction except to lift her hands in the air. She is surprised how calm her voice is when she speaks to the agent walking into the building, but she is not surprised by the snarkyness that drips from her words.

“I swear to god I purchased every single song legally this time.”

Her iPod is still a sore spot for her. It wasn’t returned to her, and her whole iTunes account had been deleted from her computer. She had to build her discography back up again from scratch, and that had cost time and money. The agent smiled at Darcy, and she felt herself going on high alert because agents don’t smile. Like at all. Coulson didn’t even have facial expressions (except annoyed and more annoyed, and that was what she got from his scrunching eyebrows). Darcy was like 99.7% sure they all had the muscles that turn their frowns upside down removed during basic training or super secret agent school or something. She tries to thinks about why SHIELD would be here. Erik was still with them. She feels her shoulders tense and her stomach twist itself into knots. Jane had been gone a week. She had literally just talked to her 30 minutes ago right before she left for work.

“Oh god, Jane’s gotten into an accident didn’t she!? You’re here to tell me that she’s dead! Fuck. I told her not to talk and drive! FUCK!”

The agent rushes forward and puts a hand on her arm to steady her on her feet. The agent that she fully recognizes as one of Coulson’s protégés. _Crap_.

“Miss Lewis, Dr. Foster is unharmed and is still enroute to her lab in Tromso as we speak.”

“What about Erik? Is he okay?”

The agent gives her a kind smile. Panic swells in Darcy's chest.

“He is completely fine, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax. She shakes off the pretty agent’s hand.

“They why are you here? No offense, but storming up, guns blazing, isn’t the best way to make an introduction.”

She nods toward the muscle out in the parking lot scouting out the perimeter with gun holsters clearly in view and yeah, that one guy had a sniper rifle. The agent gets her meaning and is probably aware of what happened here barely a year ago. The agent smiles again and extends a hand.

“I’m Agent Maria Hill. I’m here on Colonel Fury’s behalf.”

And just like that, Darcy starts to panic again. Because Fury’s the one you never want to meet. If you're meeting with Fury, you are screwed because somehow or someway you fucked up. That’s what Erik told Darcy the few times he actually got to call them to check up on Jane and her while he was away doing sciencey things for SHIELD. From the look on her face, Agent Hill must know that she understands who Colonel Fury is. She pulls a sleek little laptop from nowhere, opens it, and places it on Darcy’s abandoned desk. She motions for her to sit in the chair. Darcy sinks heavily into it trying hard to figure out what Fury wants with her. Suddenly, he is there in all of his eyepatched and black leathered glory, virtually at least.

“Ah, Miss Lewis. I hope we aren’t interrupting anything.”

She knows that she should keep her mouth shut. The rational part of her brain is telling her that this dude means business and could probably make her disappear off the face of the earth with a single phone call. But she was just scared out of her mind, and there are agents outside of her home, with guns, and she is _not_ in the mood to cater to the government right now.

“Actually, you are.”

Fury has the gall to smile at her.

“That’s unfortunate.”

She smiles right back at him.

“It really is.”

“This takes priority over your school work, Miss Lewis.”

She is about to tell him that he can take his priorities and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. She isn’t an agent. She isn’t even connected to SHIELD in anyway except SHIELD is funding Jane’s research, and Jane is funding Darcy's bank account. Agent Hill is handing her a folder with photocopies of her research, pictures of her at the observatory and the echo-locations lab at her school, using Jane’s equipment for her research, her in the lab, in the field where they drive miles away from any living human being to get data and chart stars and chase fucking storms, and pictures of her at the 7Eleven down the road....

“The _fu_ -”

Fury cuts her off.

“You have been conducting experiments in Interstellar Sound Localization and Radio Astronomy, and you have been using Dr. Foster’s name and connections established through SHIELD to gain access to sensitive equipment and information to continue on with said research.”

Darcy sits ramrod straight in her chair. Because how he’s phrasing it, he makes it sound like she’s stolen Jane’s identity and hacked into secure government resources. He’s fucking playing with her. She feels her blood rise hot in her veins. She has to bite her tongue to keep from cursing him out. Darcy doesn’t like being manipulated or threatened.

“She gave me full permission to use her access and her name seeing as she is my supervising professor. I wasn’t prying into secure files and never went above the clearance level SHIELD gave me. I’m working on my dissertation which, last time I checked, allowed me to use the labs at my own university and whatever equipment and information my professors gave me access to.”

Fury nods congenially.

“Yes, that’s the point of this call, Miss Lewis. We allowed you access because we had a passing interest in the data you where gathering. We are very much interested in it now.”

Hill hands her another file. This time it’s filled with Erik’s research. She glances through it and feels some of her anger fade quickly into disbelief. She had known he was doing something big, but nothing of this magnitude. Is that a fucking portal?

“What you are seeing is above classified; in fact it doesn’t exist on record.”

Darcy snorts, “Well it sure as hell appears off record. That portal collapse took a chunk out of Arizona.”

Fury steeples his fingers and gives Darcy an unwavering stare. It doesn’t intimidate her at all. She’s been given meaner, sterner looks from Jane and, on occasion, her academic advisor. This just annoys her. She wants to poke him in his good eye. Manipulation never really worked well with her and threats only made her more uncooperative. Fury seems to finally recognize that as he relaxes in his chair. Or what she thinks is him relaxing.

“Miss Lewis, from the research you’ve gathered and tested, I feel secure in saying that you’ve proven your theories. What I am about to ask of you is completely confidential and is of the utmost importance to national and global security. If you agree to accept this mission, you will find that your past transgression concerning your transcripts will be erased. You will be allowed to continue with your research. Your choice of graduate school, if you choose to pursue further education, will also be expanded quite vastly and with full tuition coverage.”

Darcy narrows her eyes at the screen and folds her arms across her chest. She knows how it emphasizes certain appendages. She gives him kudos for not dropping her gaze.

“Let me guess, if I tell you to fuck off you’ll pull my minuscule clearance level. You'll take me off of Jane’s research even if she will throw a massive shit storm and trust me, she will. You’ll make sure I never see those science credits again, boot my ass back to Culver, and I’ll never be able to talk to her again or see Thor again if he ever comes back. Not to mention you’ll slap me with so many NDA’s I’ll give myself carpal tunnel from signing them all. You’re probably not above making my life even more miserable. So I'm guessing you’ll also blackball me from going back into my program. You’ll make it a bitch for me to get into any reputable grad school. Hell, you’ll probably charge me for all the government’s money I spent to keep Jane alive because when you want to take someone out you cripple them then crush them so they can’t get back up. Now, did I leave anything out Colonel?”

He laughs at her. Fury actually laughs at her. And it’s not a maniacal _I am plotting your mysterious death_ laugh. It’s a genuine, _that’s funny_ laugh. Whoa, Darcy is adding that to and scratching it off her bucket list.

“Miss Lewis, not many people comprehend the lengths we will go to secure the lives of billions let alone scoff at them.”

Darcy lifts a shoulder in a shrug.

“I’m not most people, Colonel.”

Fury’s lips twitch up into something that could be considered a smile, if you squinted.

“That’s exactly why we need you, Miss Lewis.”

The thing is, Darcy doesn’t do well with orders. She is still the only person in her hometown to get detention in kindergarten because she refused to take a nap on demand. She’s never been one to let anyone else force her into something she doesn’t want to do. Call it oppositional defiance disorder or being bullheaded or whatever. Darcy doesn’t do ultimatums (ask her list of ex’s). But this is different. Yes, he is threatening her. Yes, he is stacking the deck. But Fury is being sincere when he says that they need her. She just knows he is. For all the persona, and leather, and super-spy credentials, he is asking her for her help. It’s not that hard to make a decision, not when billions of lives could be at stake. But it still rubs her the wrong way.

“All my students loans are paid off. My tuition is paid in full, including textbooks, housing, and a meal plan whenever and wherever I decide to go to school. Jane gets whatever equipment she wants, even if it is a stupid Walkman from ’97. Selvig gets at least one Swedish intern to yell at in his native tongue and to share in his weird food cravings. He’ll be happier and actually eat.”

Fury doesn’t even blink. He just steeples his fingers.

“Done. Pack your bags, Miss Lewis. You’re in the air in 30.”

Darcy stares at the black screen for a few seconds. She ignores the roll of dread in her stomach. It honestly has nothing to do with Fury and the possibility of her having to sign over her soul to SHIELD.

“I should have probably requested a seat in first class.”

Maria Hill smiles at her kindly. It's kind of confusing (and scary).

“You don’t have to worry about leg room Darcy.”

Definitely scary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress it enough that the science field Darcy is in is COMPLETELY FICTIONALIZED. It sounds possible, but it is not actually plausible. The last time I was actually in a science class I blew up a beaker and somehow turned my experiment bright fucking pink when it should have been orange. Seriously, you can't trust me with science, but you can trust me with words!


	2. Chapter 2

They really weren’t joking about leg space. When they drove her to the middle of the desert, she may have had a split-second thought of  _oh-shit-they’re-going-to-murder-my-ass-in-the-middle-of-nowhere_  before Maria Hill pressed a button and a Quinjet appeared. Darcy just blinked and asked her how much that paint job cost. Maria was an excellent pilot, but she did nothing to calm Darcy's nerves once she handed Darcy a tablet filled with files and a mission operation debriefing with the curt directions of “read up.”

By the time they landed, on another secret government facility in the middle of nowhere, Darcy was ready for a shot of something really strong. Hill is leading her through the facility. It's easy to ignore the agents they pass up. Because Hill is taking her to Fury. She is taking her to the Avengers. She is taking her to Erik and Thor (because he was back on Earth without telling anyone, and she will give him shit for that later). She forces all the nervous anxiety aside as Maria pauses outside of a nondescript door. Darcy takes a breath, squares her shoulders, and steps inside where Nick Fury is welcoming her into the room with an outstretched arm.

She barely has a second to look at the faces sitting at the table before Thor is there gathering her up in a tight hug.

“LADY DARCY! It does me well to see you!”

She fights the sudden flash of embarrassment (Thor is hugging her in front of  _the Avengers_ ), and hugs the Thunder God for all he’s worth. He is her friend, and he does have a good reason for not telling her (or telling Jane) he was back. She turns back to the gathered heroes, staring at her in different stages of shock and intrigue, and clears her throat.

“He’s an uh, old friend.”

Thor lowers himself to one knee and takes her hand.

“I must beg forgiveness, Lady Darcy. For it was not my intention to keep my presence on Midgard a secret-”

She rolls her eyes and tugs him up by tucking her fingers into his collar and pulling until he swiftly follows. She knows she only moves him because he allows her too. She looks him in the eye and smiles.

“You were busy saving the world from your little brother. I can’t really fault you for not having the time to text your BFF Darcy. Just don’t let it happen again.”

He picks her up and swings her as he hugs her this time. It takes all she has not to squeal or laugh like a 6-year-old. He puts her down gently. She straightens her clothes as Erik gives her a kiss on the cheek. His welcome is much more reserved. Fury clears his throat. She catches his lone eye before he speaks.

“Fury, before we get this shindig kicked off, how about we get your side of the bargain out of the way?”

After reading the reports Maria had given her, she had negotiated another deal with Fury. This time he actually seemed far more amused at her request than annoyed. The director nods once and speaks into a communicator.

“Agent Coulson, come in.”

They all wait in silence as the door slides open and Coulson enters. Darcy beams at him.

“Hello, Agent Coulson.”

The man, who never loses his cool, who always has a plan, who went against an unstable demi-god without fear and was almost killed, goes pale at the sight of the twenty something year old and her Cheshire cat-ish grin. He freezes in the doorway.

“Miss Lewis.”

She pulls a taser out of her coat pocket. The whole room can see the Agent’s face twitch. Steve practically shoots out of his chair. The only reason why he’s not vaulting over the table is because Thor has a hand on his arm. Darcy’s grin grows wider as she tosses the taser in her hand and extends the handle to him.

“This is the Taser that took down Thor. You give me my iPod back, and you can add this to your collection.”

Tony’s eyes are wide. He’s never seen Coulson so… any other emotion than annoyed (usually directed at him). He actually looks afraid of the girl. Steve looks to Fury’s cool face and slowly stands down when he realizes that this is the bargain Darcy was talking about. Coulson looks wary but nods and reaches out to take the offered weapon. Darcy pulls it back to her at the last minute with a hard glint in her eyes.

“If you ever try to get yourself killed again, I will taser you so hard you’ll be drooling into the carpet while I catch up on  _Supernatural_ on my DRV. Got it, Secret Agent Man?”

Clint’s laugh is hearty; he has to brace himself against the table to keep himself from falling out of his chair. The redhead seated next to him whacks him on the head. Tony is pointing at her with an excited and amused grin. He looks directly at Fury.

“Oh, I like her! She can stay!”

Steve cuts Tony a sharp glare. The billionaire pouts but quiets to watch as Agent Coulson wraps both hand around the taser, conveniently catching Darcy’s hands in his while doing do.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She smiles, nods her head, and turns to the God of Thunder. Her face goes from open and friendly to stern and serious in the blink of an eye. It’s kind of amazing. They all watch in amused awe as she pokes Thor in the chest. He actually leans away from her.

“You, go sit. I’ve got things to say.”

The God huffs, but nods his head and joins the other at the table. Tony gawks.

“Wait, you’re the specialist that's going to help us send Point Break home?”

Darcy twitches an eyebrow at the nickname but nods her head.

“You got a problem with that, Tin Man?”

Tony’s smirk grows into a slow grin. He waves to the table in front of them.

“Not at all.”

Fury clears his throat.

“If we’re ready?”

Darcy nods as Maria does something to the table that makes Darcy's files spill out a across it, one going to each of the people seated at the table. (Darcy is not spazzing out at the fact that the people seated at the table are the Avengers… or the shiny, new tech laid out before her. Seriously, this would organize Jane’s research like crazy!)

She smiles at Bruce when he catches her eye.

“Apparently, I’m supposed to cream myself if I ever met you or so says the Physics department back at school.”

Erik plants his face in his hands. Bruce nearly chokes on his tongue. Tony pats him on the back roughly. Barton looks tremendously amused as Steve, Captain Freaking America, looks down at the table with a pink tint to his cheeks. Darcy doesn’t have time to make sense of it as the pretty redhead leans forward and speaks to her. She remembers from the file that she’s a spy,  _the_  spy, Natasha Romanov aka The Black Widow.

“You are going to be helping us build the new Bifrost.”

Darcy goes to correct her when Tony cuts her off.

“No offence kid, but why do we need you when we have Dr. Selvig?”

She really doesn’t take offense to the kid thing because Tony Stark probably calls everyone kid. She does take offense at his condescending tone. That shit will not fly with her.

“Because Erik might be a genius, but he doesn’t have  _anything_  on me.”

That gets a smirk out of Tony who shares a look with Bruce Banner.

“Besides, this is my project just as much as it’s his. He’s tried kicking it old school, and it kind of left a huge crater in Arizona sooooo... I get to try it my way.”

“And what is your way exactly?”

She grins at Dr. Banner. She hears Erik sigh next to her.

“Interstellar Sound Localization and Radio Astronomy.”

They all kind of blink at her because that is what they were least expecting to hear. Darcy likes to leave people off balance. It makes the world more interesting or at least her world more interesting. She has to fight to keep the smile off of her face because she just stumped the Avengers. Added and checked off her bucket list.

“That’s a relatively new and uncharted field.”

Tony says it like it’s nothing, but now his face is barely containing his excitement. He likes new and uncharted things. Hell, he invented a new science and a new element in one year so he’s kind of the king of this shit.

“I studied under a woman who has like three PhDs in astrophysics and is trying to build a bridge literally made of rainbows and this guy-”

She jerks her thumb at Erik who is now sitting and sighing heavily. Because honestly? He knew this was coming. Darcy doesn’t let anyone walk all over her.

“-who is opening giant ass portals to other dimensions. I kind of learned to blaze my own trail.”

She does throw up a hand to hold off comments because she’s got to lay this out on the table before anyone makes any kind of assumptions. Fury is well aware of this. They need to be too.

“Before we get into this, I just want to make something clear. I’m kind of like a savant. I don’t do much science. I stumbled into this, literally. I don’t know why I understand any of it. Hell, I don’t know how I make it work most of the time. I don’t care about the science or the jargon or making a name for myself out of it. All I really care about is the music.”

She lays her phone on the table and fiddles with the computer embedded into the glass. She pulls up what looks like a video and hits the little play arrow as she speaks.

“This clip is what I extracted from Dr. Foster’s data during the initial meeting with Thor. This is what the Bifrost sounds like when it’s open to Asgard.”

It’s a melody; long and dark. But it’s there sounding like angels made of rock and stardust and galaxies. (Tony ignores the chill that runs down his spine. He remembers the complete silence of space and the infinite beauty of bold nebulas of color against the all-consuming black. He realizes that Darcy is staring at him. He panics and thinks that he has been caught in his little nightmarish daydream. But she grins at him, and he wants to laugh. It’s eager, like she’s going to prove something. It reminds him of well, him when he was younger.)

“No one can hear you scream in space. That might be true, but apparently, space is a fan of WuTang.”

Steve mutters quietly to Tony. 

“What’s a WuTang?”

Tony ignores his questions and leans forward to pull all her data open with his fingers on the smart table. It’s impressive. She knows it is.

“You picked up reflected fragments of sound from a black hole?”

She makes a rolling motion with her hand like it’s not important.

“I passed that information onto NASA because from what I think I’m looking at, my data shows that black holes aren’t necessarily never ending. In fact, depending on certain variables if you have two black holes about to eat each other, you can actually use their exerted force and jump back in time. But again, I don’t know shit about space. That’s just what Jane said."

She ignores the table’s accumulated noise of surprise and, in Tony’s case, pure delight. She laughs at herself. The table seems to be half in shock, but the scientists, Tony and Banner, are giving her smiles. She looks back down and fiddles with the in-table computer and mutters _I have got to get me one of these._  She spreads open her hands and copies of her files and her work appear in front of the members at the table. She pulls up another file. This time it’s the sound the rings of Saturn make as they circle their planet.

“This was got my research stated. Who knew a Facebook link would lead to me accidentally pioneering a new field of science?”

She lets it play as she pulls up other files.

“If sounds can’t be sustained in space because of the lack of oxygen, then how in the hell do the rings of Saturn make music?”

She lets that sink in as she pulls up more recordings.

“I used an echo sound system and a high-powered, deep wave telescope to boost the range. It’s kind of the equivalent of using a solo cup to boost the sound output of your phone speakers. I just recorded what came back to me and analyzed the data. I don’t think I would have even understood what I was getting if I hadn’t been working with Dr. Foster or Erik for so long.”

The next one she plays almost sounds like someone riffing into a guitar though it’s distorted and pulled taunt like a long hold on a piano. 

“This is  _Back In Black_  reverberated back after it had passed through a portion of space. It’s not that there aren’t any elements in the atmosphere to vibrate and create noise. It’s just that they are so far away from each other and the temperature keeps them relatively inactive. We’ve never had the technology to pick up the sounds. Now we do, and it’s freaking  _awesome_.”

She pulls up a chart that shows three different test areas and three different songs.

“This is from Venus. This is from the Horsehead nebula. And this was just for shits and giggles until it actually worked. It’s from a fully developed black hole.”

She doesn’t play out the songs but shows the pitch frequencies. She overlaps all three songs from each test area. There are constant peaks with each song from each target, no matter how different they are. Song 1, 2, and 3 all have the same points unique to each target.

“Each test area has a different sound signature. No matter what, the music always comes back with a pattern unique to the destination. It’s like coordinates via sound waves. I can send a message to that location if I use the pattern.”

Tony and Bruce look over the files more closely as Darcy watches and tries to contain her excitement. She waits until they get why she’s here. She eventually gives up as she bounces on her toes. She pulls up the sounds the portal made when open to Asgard, pulling up the song and matching its points just as her other tests did. She’s found its unique song.

“Erik was making a door. Anything could come in or out. Using his research and my knowledge, I can make a lock. And Asgard is the only thing that can open it.”

That leaves them all speechless, but Steve is wary.

“We won’t have the tesseract.”

She flails her hands in the air dramatically. It makes Thor laugh fondly. Natasha raises an eyebrow but remains silent.

“I think we’ll only need to charge the portal with it, not need it here. It’s like, it’s like fuel. We only need enough to send the portal to Asgard. The portal here on Earth will lie dormant until it’s activated there. The only time energy from the tesseract will be on earth is during transport. This is just a temporary fix until Jane, uh, Dr. Foster establishes the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. The main goal is to get the tesseract and all of its bad ju-ju off the planet as soon as possible but still be able to transport Thor between the realms.”

“How do we get Thor from point A to point B? Wouldn’t we need two portals, one here and one there if the Bifrost is still broken? After we unlock this thing how do we communicate?”

She looks at the man all decked out in body hugging black leather that does everything to accentuate his arms. Welcome to the gun show that is Clint Barton, archer boy extraordinaire. She grins at him.

“Heimdall.”

They all look at her like she’s grown two heads. Seriously? She just talked about space music and portals and rainbow freaking bridges, and now she’s lost them?

“Giant gold sentry? Guards the Bifrost in Asgard? Knows all, sees all, hears all? Is probably laughing his ass off at me right now? That Heimdall.”

She looks around the room and even Fury looks perplexed, serious but perplexed. She smacks Thor on his shoulder, and he leans away from it. Mostly to keep her from injuring herself, but it looks like she actually had force behind it. It makes the people around the table go back to being serious.

“You didn’t tell them as much as you told us, huh? Thunder God, I do not know what to do with you.”

Erik takes over in her explanations, giving them some back story about Thor, keeping it strictly formal and vague. Then he explains about the plans to adapt the portal to his technology. Most people at the table look to Darcy to interject. She just gives them a wane smile.

“Like I said before, I was goofing off and found a new science. I get it somehow. I’m still more of the Political Sciences side of the Arts and Sciences.”

That gets her skeptical looks from quite a few of them. She fixes them with a glare.  
  
“I analyze data. I chart numbers. I send out emails and proofread articles. I wrangle scientists into eating and sleeping. You build shit, and I tell people why it's a good thing. Sometimes I help with the making, yeah, but most times I’m just an extra set of eyes. You know, outside observers sometimes catch more than the person staring at the thing that  _justisn’tworking_  for 4 days in a row.”

Natasha gives her a head tilt. Steve makes an understanding noise. Bruce is still poking around files. Tony is out right grinning now. Barton looks a little amused or bored. It’s really hard to tell. Agents and their weird resting faces.  
  
“All I really do is take science babble and make it into something understandable to the average human.”

She turns to Fury with a shit-eating grin.

“Your welcome for that by the way. If Jane was expected to turn in reports, they’d be nothing but equations and coffee stains.”

He narrows his eye at her but doesn’t say anything. Tony sits back in his chair, arms crossed, with a strange glint in his eye.

“So what you’re saying is?”

She spread her arms wide and opens her palms.  
  
“If you build it they will come... or Thor will go.”  
  
Tony outright laughs. It’s kind of maniacal. He looks like what Jane looks like when she’s had too much caffeine.

“Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark, would you show our new liaison to the laboratory?”

Bruce stands and adjusts his glasses, as the members at the table remain seated.

“Dr. Lewis, this way please.”

Darcy draws back in her research.

“It’s actually just Lewis. No doctor. My degree is in Comparative Political Science. Or will be when I graduate.”

She gives them all a sheepish smile and a shoulder shrug. Which Tony goes ape shit over. He throws an arm around her shoulders as he leads her from the room, speaking animatedly with his Tony Stark debonair look number 5 in full force. She smiles but lifts an eyebrow in weariness as he walks with her.

“Miss Lewis, Darcy, can I call you Darcy? Darcy, you are quite the firecracker. Pepper would love you. But anyway, your research is completely exemplary. I mean your use of ACDC as a control is simply… badass. I was wondering if you would be interested in a position at Stark Industries after you graduate. You would be enormously compensated, of course, and so would Jane, seeing as I would be taking away her research assistant. But really, who would ever call you a research assistant-”

The second the door slides shut the room erupts in voices. Steve is the first to speak up and causes the other voices to fall away.

“She’s just a girl.”

Thor bristles at that.

“Lady Darcy is of four and twenty years. She helped win a fight against the Destroyer from Asgard. She has taken down an Asgardian without aide. She understands a subject that very few mortals can even begin to comprehend and has made vast discoveries that has been hidden away in the celestial heavens that none have ever thought to look. She understands the diplomatic world more vastly than most her years. She is a noble and intelligent warrior. She is a Shield Sister and a maiden of Asgard! It is an honor that you have even made her acquaintance!”

They all seem to calm themselves at Thor’s speech about Darcy. They can tell that he cares for her and that he respects her. It’s a big deal, a Demi-god praising a human, but it isn’t enough.

It’s Steve that speaks up again, this time looking slightly apologetic.

“I only mean that she is young, and she isn’t experienced.”

He pulls something up on the table for all of them to see. He’s gotten better at using the technology around him.

“From her file, she is a Political Science major like she said, but she’s changed it several times over the last 4 years. The field she’s working in is so small there are only two other doctors that are certified in the area, and they both work for NASA. She’s hasn’t even graduated college and the only astronomical field she’s studied under in Dr. Foster and yourself, Dr. Selvig. She’s just told us that she barely understand what she does.”

The first person to speak up is Clint Barton.

“Understandable, Cap. I’m no scientist, but her research looks solid. She’s backed up her theories, ran test after test, hell NASA called her once or twice with a few questions that she actually had an answer to. Regardless of her not knowing everything about her field, she was honest with us from the get go.”

Natasha’s voice is playful as she speaks to Steve.

“Besides, I remember someone else’s file. You were only 24 when you became Captain America, Steve. And you didn’t have any experience in the field either.”

It makes Steve duck his head in either shame or embarrassment. Dr. Banner asks a question to Erik.

“Dr. Selvig, do you think that Ms. Lewis’s idea will work if you combine your knowledge on the portal?”

Erik shakes his head.

“Logistically, yes. Her research has solid backing. I’m certain that the directional frequency she derived from her work, the “melody of location” as she calls it, is Asgard’s. I am only concerned about is, well, Darcy. This isn’t her world. I never wanted her to get sucked into this. She’s also doing this, guaranteeing that Earth has access to Thor, behind Dr. Foster’s back.”

Thor looks at his hands and clenches them tightly before letting them go and resting them on the table.

“Darcy has no family left. Jane is like her big sister. I am concerned that this will take an emotional toll on her.”

Surprisingly, Colonel Fury nods his head.

“Your concern is noted, Doctor, but Miss Lewis signed on for this.”

“I don’t think I’m being clear, Director. Darcy is like a daughter to me.”

He stands and narrows his eyes at Fury.

“If  _anything_  happens to her…”

Thor rises to stand beside Erik.

“You will be answering to me.”

The Director looks unbothered by the declaration. He inclines his head. Erik loses his stiff stance, and Thor grins.

“Still, Lady Darcy will do what needs to be done. She is far stronger than most give her credit for.”

He claps Dr. Selvig on the shoulder and gestures toward the door.

“Come Erik, let us see how well the Lady Darcy is faring with the Man of Iron.”

The rest of the Avengers watch as the two men walk out of the room. Their devotion to her and the trust they have in her speaks louder than any of the information found in the files spread out in front of them. That’s all the validation they need, even if they are still unconvinced the whole mission will be a success.

* * *

She winds up declining Stark’s job offer and distracting him and Bruce by pointing out an error in an equation they have on one of the many marker boards in the makeshift lab. She slips out into the hallway determined to find the elevator and the residential wing. One of the jackbooted thugs had shown her to her room for a hot second before Tony swept her off to the labs. She could really do with a nap. She feels exhausted already, and all she’s done is meet the Avengers and fend off Tony Stark. She’s been without Jane for 2 weeks, and she’s already rusty. She’s too busy stuck in her head to realize that she’s kind of lost. She’s nowhere near the dorm rooms. She’s more than a few floors beneath the Earth. There are no windows, and it's exponentially cooler.

She can see two armed guards off down the hall behind thick glass doors. They don’t seem too concerned with her. She stops walking to stare down the dark hallway beyond them. There are more doors and guards. She realizes where she is. Somewhere under layers of steel and glass and who knows what else is the person singlehandedly responsible for hurting her best friend and also trying to take over the world. She hears a voice right behind her. She’s proud that she doesn’t jump a foot in the air. She didn’t even know anyone was there.

“You couldn’t get past the retinal or voice scans, not to mention the armed guards and weapons.”

She recognizes his voice. It’s agent Barton. She knows about what happened to him, what Loki did to him. She wonders if he knows all the security measures because he tried to get in. She doesn’t turn to look at him, instead she keeps looking down the hall.

“I wouldn’t even know what to say to him.”

She starts walking back to the elevator, his footsteps solid next to hers. Of course, now he decides to play human. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. It barely feels like they’ve moved when the doors open again, to a hallway that looks more familiar. Darcy steps out, and Barton falls into step beside her again.

“You have mad ninja skills, no doubt. But you’re getting close to creeper status just appearing out of nowhere.”

She catches his grin out of the corner of her eye. She knows he can see her grin too.

“The last guy that tried to sneak up on me got a taser to the balls.”

Baton nods once as they stop at the door to what she recognizes is her room.

“Noted.”

She steps into her room and spots her bags on the twin bed. She starts to dig out her research thinking that it might not be so boring on this mission after all.


	3. Chapter 3

“Ouch.”

Darcy grabs at the back of her head and watches as Tony hides a hand behind his back. Did he just…

“Did you just rip out some of my hair?”

His eyes go wide.

“What? No! Why would I do that?”

She starts to walk toward him. He rounds a table.

“It’s such pretty hair. What kind of conditioner do you use? Is it leave in? I smell shea butter. Is it some kind of mask?”

He grabs something off the table and darts toward the door before she can corner him.

“I’m gonna go call Pepper. Tell her all about it. She’s always going on about her, um, hair.”

Then he flees. Darcy blinks at his vacated spot in the room.

“Uh, Jarvis? Do I even want to ask?”

The AI sighs. It sounds world-weary. Well, probably just Stark-weary.

“Even if you were to ask, Miss Lewis, I am under orders not to answer.”

She bits at the skin of her thumb.

“Can you tell me if he’s up to something dangerous at least?”

Waiting for an Artificial Intelligence program that is made to answer to your every beck and call actually answer you? Doesn’t really bode well.

“That is difficult to say, Miss Lewis. But in fairness to Master Stark, he usually means well.”

Somehow that is not comforting to Darcy at all.

* * *

“Paperwork,” Darcy grumbles and flips to another page to sign, “is the devil.”

Bruce had done his best to help her out. He’s sorted all of the papers SHIELD piled onto her designated work area into stacks. One was initial only, read then sign, and then read, re-read, check the fine print, and then sign. He’s had more experience with this than her. All she had to do was sign a couple of NDA’s after Thor. She basically has a small forest on her desk now. She’s got one more packet to sign when Tony comes striding in… with more in his hand.

He had decided he liked her when she didn’t shy away from learning something new and getting her hands dirty. (And there is the fact that she’s better with a cut torch and a soldering iron than he is. He had actually turned to her and just started for a minute and asked if he could keep her. She laughed and said yes and started talking about how _Casper_ was no _Stardust,_ which was the _Princess Bride_ of her generation.) She had been helping Bruce and Tony build the portal device before she got waylaid with paperwork. Which Tony is bringing her even more of. Why is he bringing her more paperwork?

“Why are you bringing me more paperwork?”

He smiles and tosses it top of the paper she was just about to initial. Great, he’s bringing her more paperwork _and_ messing up her system. She frowns at him. He shrugs.

“I’m always the money behind these operations. Sign where the pretty plastic flags are, and you’re not held accountable for any costs.”

She doesn’t even question it. She just signs and hopes it doesn’t come back to bite her on the ass.

* * *

She’s blaring Biggie in her ear buds. She’s moving around the lab with her thoughts focused on getting the portal open and stable. But that doesn’t mean all her senses are shut down. Music is drowning out almost all sound, but she can still feel someone behind her. She knows when she’s being watched. She’s just completely surprised by the unconscious body writhing on the floor at the end of her taser.

“Holy shit!”

She lifts her finger from the trigger. The body still twitches a little as she drops the gun and falls to the floor beside him. She hurriedly reaches up to the panel by the door.

“Holy shit! I just tasered Clint!  _HOLY SHIT_!”

She doesn’t know which button she hit or who she calls, but there is an immediate laugh.

“I knew I liked you for a reason!”

Tony’s laugh is cut off by Steve’s calm voice.

“We’re coming, Darcy. Calm down. It’ll take a lot more than that to take down Clint.”

Tony’s laugh is cut off again when he sees Darcy holding Clint's head in her lap, eyes filled with worry and fear. Captain America places a gentle hand on her shoulder and murmurs to her as Natasha checks his pulse.

“He’s just been knocked unconscious. He’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well, his impersonation of a freaking rock had me worried for a second.”

That’s when Thor bursts through the door with Bruce Banner in tow.

“Lady Darcy, are you unharmed?”

She nods, eyes now watery, at the Asgardian Prince. He ignores her current position, watching the medic team put Clint on a gurney, and simply lifts her into his arms and hugs her with such care none of the rest of the haphazard team knew he was even capable of.

“The Hawk will recover his wits… and then I shall correct him on his error. He shall not be as you say a “creeper” any longer.”

That gets a smile out of her. He places her down on the floor as the medics take Clint for scans, just incase, Bruce explains. Natasha gives her a smile, a real smile, and takes her arm.

“You did warn him.”

Darcy busts out laughing; her mood changing completely from the worry just seconds before.

“You are so going to rag on him for getting knocked unconscious by a college undergrad, aren’t you?”

Natasha smiles at her again.

“I think you deserve a break. Come on, I’ll make you some tea.”

The rest of the group stand around the lab in a heavy silence as they watch the two women leave. The Black Widow doesn’t just smile at people. She sure as hell doesn’t comfort people or make them tea. They all know this. They all also know that Thor has never showed such gentleness to anyone, like ever, besides Jane of course, but they didn’t get to witness that.

Steve watches until they round the corner out of sight. Then he rounds on Thor.

“What was that about?”

“Lady Darcy is a strong warrior. She did much the same to Clint the first time she met me. Some men are not as noble as they should be. Jane has explained to me of the unwanted sexual advances all Midgardian women face within their lifetime. Lady Darcy has had such incidents during her schooling. She arms herself for fear that she will one day be hurt. But I will not let that happen.”

They all nod. They won’t let anything hurt Darcy. They all care for her too much. Which is amazing for someone they only met days ago. They all wanted to kill each other after 12 hours of meeting. But this young lady…

Steve seems more relaxed now that he knows he doesn’t have a trigger-happy college student in close quarters with his team. He does come up with another question for Thor with his head titled to the side. He’s actually been wondering about it since he’s met Miss Lewis.

“Why do you call her Lady Darcy?”

Thor grins.

“It makes her happy, and it does me well to see her smile.”

Tony claps his hands together drawing their attention back on him and a rather important question.

“So, is anyone else terrified that Natasha’s taken her under her wing?”

Steven rolls his eyes and walks out with Bruce hot on his heals. Thor chuckles and pats him on the shoulder (ie he almost knocks him off his feet) as he follows.

“What? It’s a legitimate concern!”

* * *

They are all eating lunch in the common area they’ve commandeered. Well, Tony has commandeered and had it remodeled because “only government lackeys get treated like government lackeys”. The baby agents have a pool about who can be the first to sneak and steal the good snacks. It’s somewhere in the upper 20s that have tried and failed to get past Jarvis, and, on one memorable occasion, Natasha. Apparently a blonde agent had gotten the door open by using Steve’s ID, but he made the mistake of touching the Macarons Tony imported from Paris for Natasha. The poor thing still jumps when someone passes him in the hallway. Darcy’s even heard that he’s taken to sleeping with the lights on.

Which is ridiculous because Natasha doesn't need a shadow to do her dirty work. If she doesn’t want to be seen, she won’t be. She’s scary as hell. But she is a pretty cool person. She’s teaching Darcy how to do that whole ninja walk. Darcy looks over to where she’s having a heated conversation with Maria in French for the past few minutes. Darcy is pretty sure it’s about long-range rifles. Her French is a little rusty. She’d have to ask Dr. Banner for sure, but he’s too busy reading a journal. So yeah, Natasha is scary as hell. She is also hot as hell. She watches as she stretches languishly and walks from the room with Maria.

“I’d be a switch hitter just to bat on her team.”

She honestly just wanted to see everyone’s reactions. She knows the spies are always supposed to be paying attention to everything around them. (This is going to get back to Natasha, but she’ll either take it with grace or actually take Darcy up on it… either way it’s a win.) But everyone was kind of stuck in their own little worlds. She just wasn’t exactly prepared for what happens next.

Barton chokes on his coffee, spitting it everywhere. Tony nearly impales himself on his fork as he laughs. Bruce makes a keening sound like he’s dying (either from TMI or from Barton getting spit-coffee on his journal). Thor’s laugh booms across the room as Darcy watches Natasha walk away through the clear glass that encases the room. Steve, who had been sitting there quietly, seems to finally understand what Darcy was implying. His cheeks are a dusty pink as he pushes his chair away from the table loudly and walks out of the room.

“Was it something I said?”

She asks it playfully, but the quiet that immediately falls over the table makes her grin widen. She all but slams her hands down on the table in realization when no one speaks or looks at her.

“NO. WAY. He’s never?”

Tony rubs the back of his neck and avoids looking at her. Clint, who has managed the mop up his mess, keeps ducking her eyes. It’s Bruce who finally speaks up.

“If you’re asking if he um… has ever been with a uh, woman, we don’t know.”

Darcy looks like she finally got that Barbie Dream House for Christmas. Tony thinks it’s the most amazingly terrifying thing he has ever seen, because he’s seen it on Pepper’s face when he finally gives into her demands.

“The things I am willingly _to do_ for my country...”

They all watch in shock as Darcy stands and pops open the first two buttons of her shirt and flips her hair like a Charlie’s Angel over her shoulder. She makes two steps toward the door and the retreating form of Steve when Thor stops her by hooking an arm around her waist and hoisting her gently over his shoulder.

“Do not antagonize the noble warrior, Lady Darcy.”

She grins up at the giant Norse myth come to life.

“But he is so cute when he blushes!”

Thor chuckles and walks out with Darcy smiling over his shoulder, tucked safely under his arm.

“Never the less…”

They all watch as he carries her off in the direction of the lab with slack jaws. Clint opens his mouth and closes it twice before he speaks.

“Tony, she’s you… with boobs.”

Tony just nods his head in a daze before he pulls out his phone and taps at it furiously. Pepper’s face pops up on his screen, and it takes her a second to frown at the look he’s giving her.

“No.”

Tony pouts at the face filling up his phone screen.

“I want her. I _need_ her.”

Clint snorts into his coffee again, or at least what’s left of it, and Bruce just gives up and leaves. Probably to go meditate or do yoga or something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added more chapters when the writing took an unexpected turn!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have had the shittest evening. I felt like making somebody else feel better.

Nobody can ever call Darcy lazy. She might not understand all of what Jane does, but she can help her gut a radio and make an electromagnetic field detector. Tony and Bruce actively find her stuff to do because, in Tony’s words, she is decent to look at and is decent help. She is also very good at keeping Tony on task and keeping Bruce calm. Sometimes Natasha stops by to say hello. Barton’s visits always start with him by announcing his presence. He learns quick. Steve and Thor check in at least once a day. Darcy makes use of their super strength by making them lift things and bend things. She also gets to ogle them while they do it. Nobody can ever call her a saint either.

They have most of the makeshift portal complete. It looks more like a flattened version of Tony’s arc reactor than any kind of Star Trek transport pad. (Not that Darcy is disappointed, at all.) She’s helping Bruce solder something in place when Tony’s phone starts to ring. His eyes go wide, and he pales when he sees the name on the screen. He doesn’t answer it. Darcy shares a concerned look with Bruce. After about the fifth call Jarvis pings into the room.

“Sir, Miss Potts is enacting Override Protocol 002Victor3.”

Suddenly, his phone lights up and Pepper’s voice is filling the room. She sounds pissed.

“Anthony Edward Stark, you _cannot_ just forge someone’s signature on ado-”

He dives for the phone and the speaker cuts off as he holds it up to his ear.

“Pepper! Hi, Honey.”

They can’t hear what she says, but she is saying it _loudly_. Tony winces but doesn’t move the phone away from his ear.

“Pep, it’s not a big deal.”

That must have been the wrong thing to say because the yelling gets louder.

“Pep. Pepper. Pepper! She signed them! She said yes, and she signed them. Completely legal.”

Darcy is about to ask Bruce if they should leave when Jarvis pings again.

“Miss Lewis, there is an incoming call from Miss Potts.”

Darcy’s hand slips, and she ends up with an already blistering line across the back of her hand. She curses up a storm but reaches for her already lit up phone. Tony is staring at her, biting at his thumb, with his phone still raised to his ear. He must be on hold. Wow, is he whipped.

 **“** Hello?”

Pepper sounds way more calm than she had been while talking to Tony.

“Miss Lewis, I hope I’m not bothering you.”

Darcy shakes her head and jerks as Bruce puts a cold compress on her burn. Shit, that’s a second degree burn and another scar in her future.

“Uh, no. Not at all.”

Tony is frowning at her now. She frowns back.

“I’m reasonably sure that you’ve heard all, if not most, of Tony and I’s conversation?”

“Yes.”

Pepper shuffles something over the line. It sounds like papers.

“I just wanted to get confirmation from you, if that is alright?”

She narrows her eyes at Tony.

“Sure thing.”

“Did you, in fact, sign the papers Tony gave you?”

So this is about the paperwork Tony gave her to sign, the non-liability ones.

“Yes.”

“Did you sign them willingly and while of sound mind?”

What kind of question is that?

“Yes.”

“And did you give him verbal confirmation before signing the papers?”

She thinks she gave him an off hand okay.

“Yes.”

The line goes quiet before Pepper speaks again.

“Oh, well, then. Congratulations. I’ll file this as soon as possible.”

“Um, thank you?”

She can hear the smile in Pepper’s voice.

“Don’t thank me just yet. I’ll let you get back to work.” She takes a breath and speaks softly. “Keep an eye on him for me, Darcy.”

She smiles back. Even if this entire conversation has been weird from start to finish, Pepper Potts is the one asking her to do her a favor.

“No problem.”

Tony walks out of the room with a thumbs up at her and a thumbs down at the burn Bruce is treating all the while speaking in hushed tones with Pepper again.

“I should be more worried that none of that really worries me, right?”

Bruce shrugs.

“I turn green when I’m angry. I’m not really the person that you should be asking about normal reactions.”

She thinks about it for a bit and shrugs. She picks a Batman Band-Aid just to fuck with Tony.

* * *

She gives Clint a smile as he holds open the door to the fridge. He had knocked before he came into the room made of three walls of glass. She's learned quickly that he's kind of a giant dork. He watches quietly as she takes out sandwich meat and all the fixings to go with it.

“Late night snack?”

She nods a little as she reaches for a tomato, but he beats her to it. She smiles her thanks and puts her pile of gathered food onto the countertop.

“More like I haven’t eaten anything all day, and I’m not going to take painkillers on an empty stomach. Made that mistake once, never again.”

He scrunches his nose in recognition. Darcy can practically see the _been there, done that_ floating around in his head. She also notices how he doesn’t ask about why she’s taking a painkiller. He must already know about her accident in the lab. She's quickly learned that spies are notorious gossips. She motions her butter knife at the spread before her.

“You want half? I’m used to making enough to share with Jane.”

He nods as he pulls the lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado near him. He lifts a knife out of the knife block.

“How do you want them?”

She smears mayonnaise and regular old yellow mustard on the oversized cut in half kaiser roll in front of her.

“Thin.”

He makes easy work of the tomato, knife flying through it. Natasha had mentioned that he used to live and work in a circus. He’s done the lettuce and is pitting the avocado when he looks up to catch her watching him. She grins at him as she opens the wax paper and separates a few slices of ham and turkey on the cutting board.

“Well if you ever get tired of being a ninja you could take a stab at Iron Chef,” she pauses in thought on her way to the fridge and turns back to him, “not a literal stab. You have to kick their asses, not kill them.”

He grins at her and shakes his head as he slices the avocado into thin disks. He’s stopped correcting her about calling him a ninja. He probably feels like a ninja sometimes. Besides it’s better than being called an assassin. She knows that’s what he is. Without a doubt, that it was he is. But her calling him that, her even thinking that, doesn’t settle right with her. He watches as she pulls apart a piece of the fancy cheese and lays it on the top and bottom half of the sandwich.

“You know I’d kill for the regular stuff in the plastic re-sealable bag, but Tony bitched and moaned until he got his damn fancy cheese.”

She grins up at him as she takes the lettuce and tomatoes and piles them on top of the avocado and bacon.

“Barton, you are a man after my own stomach. You did see how I ignored the Dijon, right?”

He taps at the French’s bottle with the back of the knife and smiles.

“Dude doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

She laughs as she finishes off the sandwich. She flips the top with the veggies over without making a mess and motions for him to cut it in half. She takes her piece and bites into it watching as he does the same. She laughs behind her hand at his surprised face and following groan of delight.

“It’s just a sandwich, Clint.”

He mumbles around a mouthful before he goes in for a bigger bite.

“Yeah, it’s a damn good sandwich.”

She shakes her head put picks up her sandwich and leaves. If anything she's learned about Clint, it's that you can distract him with food. She wonders how long it'll take until he realizes that she left him with clean up duty.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intermission chapters are told from various Avengers PoV.
> 
> Also keep an eye on the chapter numbers. This fic has taken on a mind of it's own. It's still a canon divergence. But who know? I might make it CA:TWS compliant.

Steve doesn’t expect anyone to be in the weight room at four in the morning. He doesn’t at least expect it to be Darcy. Darcy, who is currently beating the ever-living crap out of a punching bag. She has good form and is swifter that he had thought she could be. He’s about to back out and leave her to her workout when he watches as she throws a punch incorrectly and curses at the bag as she rotates her wrist.

“You know you can break your hand like that.”

Darcy spins around at the sound of his voice. He knows her face is flushed from her workout and not because he caught her something embarrassing. Darcy doesn’t blush. He had learned that about her pretty quickly. She does offer him a tentative smile.

“Hey Cap, I didn’t know anyone would be up this early.”

He shrugs but returns her smile.

“Me either. And just Steve is fine.”

She laughs a little but nods.

“It’s kind of crazy that I’m on a first name basis with a bunch of superheroes.”

Steve bites his cheek. He isn’t a superhero. He’s still just some kid from Brooklyn trying to do the right thing. Instead of voicing his opinion out loud, he gestures to the punching bag and her wrapped hands.

“You look like you know what you’re doing, mostly.”

She laughs again and adjusts the bun of messy brown hair on her head.

“Yeah, I’m more than a little rusty. I took a Muay Thai kickboxing course in college. Apparently these things,” she grabs her breasts, “are great counterweights for balance.”

Steve wills himself not to blush, but he still feels the slight heat on his cheeks. She immediately apologizes.

“Shit, sorry! And sorry about the other day. I don’t really have a filter.”

Steve waves it away.

“It’s a different time. I’m the one that has to adjust.”

She’s staring at him with one hand on a cocked hip. She opens her mouth and quickly closes it and bites down on her smile. He knows without a doubt that she was about to offer to help him make a certain adjustment. He smiles at her because he is learning that the women of this time really are no different from the ones back in his time. They are just as secure in themselves and self-aware. It’s still a little disconcerting to have a dame talk dirtier than one of his Howling Commandos though.

“But it’s tough. Kinda like being the only human here without having some sort of superpower or decked out in some indestructible suit or crazy “I can kill you with a single paperclip” skills.”

Steve never really thought of it that way. Darcy has her wits and her humor. She has her smarts with her science. That’s the only thing she has that SHIELD needs. Suddenly, he feels angry about that. He knows that once they don’t have any use for her they will toss her away like nothing. He’s only just met her, but Darcy is not nothing. That much he knows for certain.

“Would you like me to teach you?”

She eyes him carefully but smiles.

“From the man that punched Hitler in the face? Hell, yeah.”

He rolls his eyes but directs her back to the punching bag. He watches as she adjusts her hand wraps. He doesn’t realize she’s barefoot until she sits on the mats to tighten her ankle wraps as well. He was too busy watching her almost break her wrist earlier to notice. He shows her how to hold her hands, how to follow through with her body, how to position her fingers.

He directs her through a combination before he asks.

“So what is Muay Thai?”

“It’s a form of fighting from Thailand. It’s a combat sport. Warriors used it if they lost their weapons or if their weapons were rendered useless. It’s basically fighting with all parts of your body, not just your fists. I’m just better at the kickboxing part.”

He motions for her to come into the center of the ring. She follows and raises her hands and slips into a ready stance. So does Steve. Apparently, it’s funny because she lets out a burst of laughter. He frowns.

“Come on. I can take it.”

She laughs harder, the sound pleasantly disrupting the quiet around them. She gets in under control as he loosens his stance.

“Oh, I know that Super Solider, but my hands might not.”

He blushes a little again. It’s more for his own ignorance than her compliment. He easily dons the padded black hand and arm guards that Natasha and Clint use when sparring with each other.

“Alright. Let’s see if you really are a quick learner. Give me a 1, 2, 3.”

She lets out solid punches. They go over some more terminology, some strike patterns, he makes her charge him, fight as she falls back. Eventually, when he feels like she’s found a good form and rhythm, he gives her free reign to put in some of her kicks if she feels like it. He glances at the clock on the wall to see nearly an hour has past since he’s stepped into the gym. He turns back to Darcy in time to block an attack. He dodges her punch, but she does a trick move that slams an elbow into his left hand. She grins up at his surprised look as she hops foot to foot, keeping her heart rate up.

“Dude, didn’t you just tell me to never take your eye off of your opponent? Also, I know you know what Muay Thai is. I’ve seen footage of you fighting hand to hand.”

He falls into a defensive position with a smile and gives her a bring it gesture with the guards. She easily complies and gives him a solid 5 hits. Her right hook is solid. Her left is a little sloppy. He calls out a series of combinations for her to work through.

“I wanted to distract you from whatever was distracting you.”

Yes, he knew she had some training in it before she even told him that she did. Her form, while it could use some work, wasn't rusty enough to warrant her almost fracturing her hand. She had been distracted while she was throwing those punches. She works through the combination before she answers.

“I just have a lot on my mind. I thought we would have the portal working by now. I wish I could be of more help. I wish I could understand more of what I do, but I don’t and it’s frustrating to no end. I wish I could call Jane, but she doesn’t even know that I’m here. She doesn’t know what we’re trying to build. She can’t know. I have to lie to her about all of this, about Thor.”

He watches as her punches get a little more power behind them. He tries to steer her away from the problems they both have no control over.

“Good, good. So where does Jane think you are? Still in Puente Antiguo?”

Darcy snorts, “No, she thinks I’m at some week long science thing to get my scholarship.”

His brows knit in confusion.

“I’m the 2012 Stark Young Science Award Recipient for my work in intergalactic sound waves.”

Steve makes her go through a series of punches, makes her evade for a while.

“Isn’t that cheating?”

She frowns at him.

“I won it fair and square, thank you very much. The only reason I agreed to even enter my project was the scholarship. With that and what Fury promised me, I’ll have enough money to keep in school and get my degree. Money gets tight when you change your major every semester.”

He lets her do a few free moves again, watches as her elbows, knees, and legs, strike out. (She was rusty, but it looks like her body is remembering what it knew.) He forces her to use her left hand more.

“What have your majors been?”

“Uh, let’s see… art history, child psychology, criminal justice, sports trainer, I think I tried zoology for a semester too.”

He grins at her. He sees certain aspects of Darcy in those professions. Her love for animals, willingness to listen to others problems and find a solution or at least help ease their suffering, her steadfast determination to do the right thing, her protectiveness…

“Art history, I think I would have liked to have gone to school for that.”

She grins and walks over to the water bottle left abandoned at the edge of the mat, offers him a sip. He declines.

“You would love it. I did, but loving something only goes so far. I didn’t have the passion or the drawing skills unlike someone I know.”

She raises an eyebrow at him but has a bright smile on her face. He likes her smiles, what they convey. He wants to remember her smiles. He knows, that even after everything, he will miss her when she does go.

“You know if you ever need someone to draw, work off those 70 years of rust, holla at your girl.”

He laughs, but thanks her for the offer. Suddenly, she’s moving. He barely has time to throw his hands up before she pivots on the ball of her foot and slams her leg into his right hand. He steps back, eyes wide.

“I felt that.”

Through their whole sparring session he’s felt her hits, but not like this. This sends a tremor up his arm and a sharp burn in its wake. This had impact. Steve decides if she hit an opponent with that move they would be knocked unconscious from the kick to the jaw. Darcy grins proudly at his shocked face while unwrapping her feet.

“The hardest bone in the human body is the shin.”

He turns to stare at Clint who is leaning against the door, cool eyes watching them. Darcy starts unwrapping her hands. When she’s done, she turns to grin at Steve and gives him a salute.

“Thanks for the pointers Cap’n.”

He smiles back at her and pulls off the arm pads as she bounces out of the gym. She does give Clint a smirk and a nod as she passes him by.

“That’s one hell of a dame.”

Clint just nods and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed to do something after that Teen Wolf episode. (KatexDerek skeeved me out so bad.)


	6. Chapter 6

People have looked at Darcy her whole life. At 6 it was because she was always causing trouble. At 8 it was from her big mouth. At 9 it was because of her parents’ car crash, because of her orphan status. At 14 it was because of her body. At 14 and a half it was because of her body and the no bullshit attitude that came with it. Now at 24, she’s used to people looking at her. She carries a taser, has a sharp right hook, and an even sharper tongue.

She’s used to it, but it doesn’t mean she’ll let it slide. It doesn’t mean she’d expect it here. SHIELD is all about decorum. Following the rules. Protect the world. Duty and honor and all that jazz. That’s why it’s jarring to catch a word that is not spoken in polite Spanish conversation directed at her. She’d picked up the language from her Papá (the tall, dark, and fiery Spaniard that her Grams got excommunicated from her Jewish family for marrying) when she went to live with them after her parents died. It’s come in handy, especially in New Mexico. It comes in handy now as she picks up two argents wearing all black talking. For agents on a specialized team, they aren’t being subtle in their staring. That just pisses her off more, but she’s going to be the bigger person. She’s going to ignore them-

“Esa chica tiene un perchero sobre ella.”

She turns around and marches right up to him. She doesn’t have much in the height department, but she’s been told her glare can be hotter than the sun or colder than Steve during the ‘70s.

“Esa chica también tiene un taser.”

There’s no hint of an accent in her Spanish. There’s familiarity in her Spanish that his doesn’t have. The soldier’s buddy stops snickering. The man, Rumlow as his fatigues supply, starts to stand up a little straighter. He isn’t smirking, but it looks like he wants to. The rat bastard.

“I meant no disrespect, Ma’am.”

She narrows her eyes at the soldier. Fury is getting told about this bullshit.

“Yes, you did. But you didn’t think I could understand what you were saying to your buddy.”

She lets that sink in before she crosses her arms over her chest. Rumlow’s eyes don’t dip down, but she can tell that he would have taken a peek if she wasn’t in the middle of chewing him out.

“That’s a stupid assumption to make especially knowing where you are. But you know what really pisses me off? It's the fact that the government put money into making you the badass soldier that you _think_ you are,” she jerks her thumb over her shoulder to point at Clint silently watching them behind her, “and you couldn’t even tell that he was shadowing me the entire time.”

She lifts an eyebrow as Rumlow clenches his jaw. There’s a brief flash of panic in his eyes before he speaks.

“Sorry, Ma’am.”

Clint chooses that moment to intervene. And it’s a good thing because the Ma’am thing was starting to tick her off. _Fucking jack-booted thugs_.

“I suggest that you boys report back to your station before you get up close and personal with that taser.”

Coming from him, it sounds less like a suggestion and more like a threat. Rumlow and his buddy, she didn’t care to get his name, take off. They aren’t running, but they aren’t exactly walking slowly. She watches them until they round a corner.

“I _really_ don’t like that guy.”

Clint nods. Then he rubs the back of his neck, like he’s embarrassed by the actions of the other SHIELD operative. She nips that right in the bud.

“Dude, if you’re about to apologize, don’t. This isn’t the first time something like that’s happened. It won’t be the last.”

He shrugs and meets her eye.

“I know, but Fury and Coulson are going to hear about this.”

She smiles at him.

“Oh, trust me. They will.”

The look on his face says that is might go a bit above just talking about it. She kind of hopes whatever he plans on doing is caught on SHIELD CCTV. Or that Rumlow gets shipped off to their arctic base or something. She gives him a wink and starts off down the hall again. Clint’s voice stops her from getting too far.

“Hey, exactly how many tasers do you have?”

She beams at him and turns to walks backwards toward the labs. Bruce and Tony have banned her from the lab because she’s actually been working longer than they have. (And Tony is feeling guilty that he inadvertently made her burn herself.) So she’s visiting Erik today even though the cube freaks her out.

“Four and one is pink!”

He shakes his head but smiles at her.

“Why am I not surprised?”

* * *

It's day two of the Stark and Banner enforced eviction of Darcy from the lab. They had let her look at all the specs for the radio transmitter they were going to build into the repurposed arch reactor that would be used as the makeshift Bifrost. They even let her name it _The Boom Box_. Tony looked absurdly proud. He tried to hug her. She threw a wrench at him. Then he got Coulson to hustle her out with his sneaky ninja skills between her threats of sexual harassment lawsuits and Thor. Seriously, she was halfway through a sandwich in the compound cafeteria before she even realized she left the lab. Secret Agent Man just smiled and offered to trade her pudding cup for his raspberry jello. She traded him if only because he looked all wounded with his arm sling. She narrows his eyes as his gross manipulation of her sympathy.

“Not cool, Phil. Not Cool.”

Then she stared him down until he finished all of his vegetables. The little baby agents nearby had looked at her like she was the second coming of Christ. Coulson glared at them and sent them scurrying. (If she smiled at his antics, well only her jello would know.)

Now she’s watching as Clint hits bullseye after bullseye on the firing range. She idly wonders how many targets SHIELD goes through daily when she feels a presence next to her on the open walkway that runs the upper length of the range, far out of the way of any stray bullets or arrows. Darcy speaks to the figure sitting next to her with their backs propped against the wall.

"He knows that we're up here."  
  
Natasha shrugs.  
  
"Can he hear what we're saying?"  
  
"No, but he can read lips."  
  
Darcy watches him for a while. She tilts her head toward Natasha without taking her eyes off of him.  
  
"He's not reading ours."  
  
She can see the small smile Natasha gives her out of the corner of her eye.   
  
"No, he is not."  
  
Darcy hums and watches as he executes another trick move. He tucks himself into a backflip and shoots without looking from between his legs. Darcy has no idea when that particular move would ever come in handy, but then again she isn’t a freaking superhero. What does she know? The arrow, of course, hits dead center.

"Scared of eavesdropping on the Widow? Or secure in the knowledge that you'd tell him what we talked about anyway?"  
  
Natasha just lifts an eyebrow. Darcy runs the pads of her fingers against the base of her throat and motions to where a small silver arrow on a delicate silver chain rests around Natasha's neck. The spy grins.  
  
"Neither. He does have manners, contrary to popular belief."  
  
Darcy smiles, watching as he draws against the bow and lets loose another arrow.  
  
"I've seen them first hand."  
  
This time it’s Natasha that smiles. She probably heard all about Rumlow and the complete dressing down he got from Maria Hill (on behalf of Fury), Coulson (on behalf of Clint) and _Captain America_ (on behalf of Steve not putting up with any of that bullshit from a member of his Strike Team… and on behalf of Thor for promising not to snap Rumlow like a twig). They sit together on the floor watching through the reinforced glass railing as Clint goes through half a dozen arrows. She wants to ask about the significance of the necklace. Does it mean that they’re partners or _partners_? But there is something else that has been bugging Darcy since she met Clint. She doesn’t look away from Clint as she asks.

"Something happened to him, didn't it, during the invasion?"

When she does turn to look at Natasha, her voice is neutral as is her face.  
  
"You didn't read our files?"  
  
Darcy snorts and looks back to Clint. She fleetingly thinks to herself that either view is nice.  
  
"You think ole One Eye would even let me touch them? I got the watered down versions. Even then I was only interested in putting faces to the names and figuring out triggers."

Natasha looks at her curiously. Darcy shrugs.

"Hey, everyone has shit they don't deal well with. I get zappy when I feel threatened, Jane is afraid of open water, and Erik doesn't deal well with tight spaces. I figured that superheroes probably have it worse off.”

They both watch silently as Clint adjusts his grip on his bow, gets a running start to walk halfway up a wall, aims, lets an arrow loose.  
  
“Loki did something to him.”  
  
She can almost feel Natasha’s gaze try and penetrate skin and blood and bone. Darcy has no doubt that all the rumors about her ability to break people are true. But she’s got nothing on Darcy’s Grams. Living with her grandmother and her strict rules made Darcy good at bluffing, and stalling when she dug herself a hole too deep with all the bluffing, and then later on in life after learning from her rookie mistakes, saying everything but what people expected to hear. (She doesn’t like lying, but she can do it, and she can do it well.) She learned from her Papá that sometimes it’s just better to not speak at all than mislead. People can’t read you when you don’t say anything at all. (Then he taught her Spanish so she’d have options when it came to the not speaking thing.) Fortunately, working with Jane has only improved her patience. She doesn’t have to wait long before Natasha speaks.

“How did you come by that conclusion?”  
  
Darcy shrugs and stretches her legs out in front of her.

“He hasn't been in a room alone with Erik or Thor. Erik, I understand. They’re never even on the same floor. But Thor? He's his teammate.”  
  
Natasha makes no move to interrupt her or correct her, so she continues.

“He's been avoiding him. And Thor is very careful to not mention his brother anytime Clint can't avoid him.”  
  
The bowstring makes a gentle thrumming sound when the arrow is free of it. It’s kind of a soothing noise.

“Thor thinks Clint is mad at him.”  
  
The Asgardian Prince hasn’t said it in so many words. But his storm blue eyes go soft and concerned as he tracks Clint’s retreating back. But Clint’s problem isn’t with Thor. That’s why Thor doesn’t push him to talk.  
  
"But he's just angry at himself."  
  
There is a soft noise from Natasha. It’s not a gasp of shock, but maybe of surprise. Darcy turns her head to see her to face. She gives nothing away. (Darcy didn’t think she would.)  
  
"It's not my place to tell you."

She offers her a weak smile.  
  
"No, I know. I'm not asking. I won't ask. He can tell me when he's ready. Hell, he doesn't have to tell me at all. I’m nothing to him in the grand scheme of things. We might not ever see each other again,” she shrugs if only to ignore the weird tugging in her gut at the thought, “I'm just saying that he's got another ear if he ever needs it... I'd even sign more paperwork from Coulson and Fury if I had to.”

Natasha regards her with cool blue eyes. Darcy raises her head and let’s her look her fill. She wonders how many people had the Black Widow measure their worth and what she does when she finds them lacking. She gives Darcy a soft smile.  
  
"You are much more than you seem, Darcy Lewis."  
  
She tosses her hair over one shoulder and leans back onto her palms. She throws a flirty grin to Natasha.

“I try.”

She crosses her legs and sighs as she watches Clint switch to the quiver of arrows that had been sitting on a table for the entire time she’s been watching him.  
  
"Ah, he’s testing out the new arrows he had made.”

Darcy tilts her head as Clint aims what looks like a jumbo crayon with no tip.

“He designs them?”

“Yes. He believes that if he is the on that fires them then he is the one that is best qualified to design them. This is the newest batch that Tony’s made.”

She nods immediately.

“Makes sense. He knows what he needs, how they would work in the field, what would be useful or just plain ridiculous.”

The arrow he shoots splinters into 6 separate arrows and completely demolishes the targets lined up by the computer. Darcy blinks and then starts a slow clap. Barton continues to ignore them by testing out two more trick arrows. The flaming arrow looks cool but does nothing to help the efficiency of the hit. Her favorite by far is the taser arrow. It takes out the target and everyone else in a 10-foot radius. The weighted net arrow is bulky but completely Batman-esc. But it’s got her thinking. She turns to Natasha with a wide grin.

“Do you think he can design a boomerang arrow? That would be so badass.”

Natasha throws her head back and laughs. It’s the first time Clint’s missed a target all evening. (Even if it’s 16th of an inch off center.) Darcy shoots him a wink as he looks up to where they are sitting with a gobsmacked look on his face.

Scratch _make the Black Widow laugh and mean it_ off her bucket list. **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Esa chica tiene un perchero sobre ella." - roughly means "That girl's got a rack on her."
> 
> "Esa chica también tiene un taser." - roughly means "That girl's also got a taser."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: Intermissions are told from different character's POVs.

The first thing Clint sees when he rounds the corner is her smile. Her whole face is just lit up with it. He sees the bright blue light reflected on her face and glasses through the glass windows of the lab. Getting the call that the temporary Bifrost was working was one thing, but seeing it is another. He feels himself smiling back automatically, a knee jerk reaction he's noticed he's started ot have when she's around. He’s halfway down the hall when the blue light flares into something larger, something sinister. Pure fear creeps into her eyes. His stomach drops as the world explodes.

Glass is blown everywhere. Fragments of equipment and portal slice through the reinforced walls surrounding the lab and embed themselves into the walls of the hall. Thor is thrown through the wall with the force of it. Purple smoke, from the extinguishers, pour down into the room and spill out from the broken windows. Clint doesn't realize he's even moved until he's all but shoving a hulked out Bruce out of his way to get to Darcy.

Her arm is bleeding. Some shrapnel has torn a huge gash across her forearm. There is blood pouring down her temple. He can see little bits of glass sparkling in the crimson. She seems coherent, but, from looking at Steve's shredded back. he knows that if Bruce hadn't Hulked out and Thor hadn’t put himself in front of her she would be worse off, maybe even dead. He manages to calm the rapid beating of his heart and the unfurling anger burning in his throat to call out her wounds to the medical personnel and other agents rushing into the hallway. He helps her lie down on her back. He has to force her to lie still.

“Darcy. Darcy! How many fingers am I holding up?”

She flips him off.

“Four.”

It is the correct amount even if she does nearly shout it. He feels a burst of relief drown out some of the blindsiding fear and anger. She tries to get back up as Natasha calls out the other's' wounds. Clint gives up and shifts her gently to lean up against him.

“Dr. Selvig is unharmed. Stark probably has a concussion. Rogers has minor wounds that will need to be looked at. Bruce, well Bruce is naked and unconscious.”

Clint leans back to see a giant hole in the wall and little else. He can’t really move with Darcy halfway propped up in his lap.

“I think Thor is unconscious.”

Darcy screws her eyes together in concentration and tries to focus on Natasha as she speaks. Clint realizes that the explosion probably left her with some temporary hearing loss. He confirms it as she practically yells at him again.

“Everyone okay?”

He nods, knowing she won’t understand otherwise. She still glances over to Steve who is pressing a hand to one of several heavily bleeding cuts on his ribs. He took the brunt of the impact too. He was standing closest to the windows. She shouts at him.

“Hey Cap? All ten fingers and toes functioning and accounted for?”

He nods at her as he helps Natasha guide Tony to sit on the floor. She turns back to Clint after scanning Tony for wounds. She ignores the bare ass on the floor between them that belongs to Bruce.

“What about Thor? What about the lab? The portal?”

He pulls Darcy's hand away from her ears as she tries to rub them, not wanting her to tear the glass out or push it further into the wound above her left temple. He glances over her shoulder at the lab techs as they rush into the room. From what he can see past the slow fade of purple smoke, it looks wrecked to hell. He gives her a sharp shake of his head. Thor pulls himself from the Asgardian sized hole in the wall right beside her looking a little dusty but not worse for wear. His armor caught most of the shrapnel. He is only bleeding from a few already healing scrapes.  
  
“Lady Darcy!”  
  
He kneels at her side and takes her hand. She uses him to pull herself up further. She angrily shoves Clint’s hand away from her as he tries to stop her. She points at Thor and manages to talk loudly at him, getting used to the sharp wine in her ears and understanding that her eardrums are recalibrating.

“Make sure they don’t trash anything. We need to see what went wrong.”

Thor nods and kisses her hand.

“I shall see to it.”

He dashes off into the lab where Erik is already scolding interns about not touching anything until he says so. Thank God he was seeing that the Tesseract was being secured in the room Tony built to mask its powers after he charged the portal with it. He was just walking up to them when the blast occurred. Steve is helping Stark off the ground now and into the hands of the medics. Darcy looks confusedly at Clint. He gives her a thumbs up and mouths.

“Thor, on it.”

She give him an exasperated thumbs up back, only she could pull that off, and closes her eyes and leans her head back against his chest. She lets out a whimper that he is sure she thought was silent. Clint gatherers her up and carries her to the medics because they are too slow. She doesn’t fight him this time. Her head lulls against his shoulder. He glares at the medics as he lays her down on the gurney, and they take off to the medical wing.

“We’ve got it from here Agent Barton.”

He nods and shakes himself mentally. More of his team is injured, and he’d feel better if he got a look at the explosion. His eyes are sharper than most. If anything was tampered with, he’ll spot it. Natasha joins him as they help lift Bruce onto a stretcher. She rests her hand on his forearm before she follows the gurney. The touch says she's got this. Clint goes to follow Thor into the room where he’s surveying the damage and ignoring Coulson’s urging to get checked out by the medical staff. Something crunches under his boot. It’s not the right sound to be the supposedly shatterproof glass of the lab. He lifts his foot and crouches to see what he’s stepped on. Darcy’s glasses are cracked and broken from where they were trampled on. Clint takes a second to breathe before he gets up to do his damn job because all he can picture is Darcy.

He knows that smile will haunt him in his sleep, and so will the terror in her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the angst continue!


	8. Chapter 8

When Darcy wakes up, her whole body feels like she went ten rounds with the Hulk. There is also a ringing in her ears that sounds like the stupid wind up monkey that claps the symbols together.

“Son of a motherfucking bitch.”

She hears herself say it, though it’s slightly muffled. At least her eardrums are intact.

“I’d ask how you’re feeling but…”

She turns her head to see Clint leaning against the wall. She tells him the hulk thing anyway. He doesn’t smile like she thought he would. He looks kind of angry. She ducks her head down and tries to gingerly slide herself up on the bed. She fights to keep the grimace off her face.

“How long have I been out?”

He pulls himself off the wall and into the chair placed at her bedside. He rests his wrists on his knees as he leans forward. He rubs a hand across his face.

“About 10 hours.”

Darcy wonders how many of those hours were spent here with her. Instead of asking, she nods a little. She winces at the tight feeling of the skin on her temple. Her fingers smooth across the tape holding gauze in place. Clint watches her quietly as she catalogs her body.

“You took quite a beating. Seven stitches to the temple and thirteen to your arm. Extensive bruising.”

She swallows hard while she debates her next question. She doesn’t want to know, but she needs to know. Somehow she knows that if she doesn’t ask, Clint won’t tell. He’d let her go right back to sleep.

“How bad is it?”

When he looks down at his hands instead of answering her, Darcy feels her heart clench with dread. She needs to see the damage herself. She needs to figure out what went wrong. She needs to fix this. They need to fix this. She groans as she forces herself to move. She pulls off the sensors sticking to her chest. She freezes as Clint stands and helps her remove the medical equipment. She watches him as he gently takes her arm and un-tapes the cord from the IV. She closes her eyes and leans her head back, away from the sight. She feels the needle slip out, and it’s not until he wraps a bandage around it from the little elbow tray pushed away from her bed that she opens her eyes.

“Never did like needles.”

He gives her a sad smile.

“Me either.”

He takes her arm and helps her from the bed. It’s not until he freezes, eyes focused on the purple bruise peeking out from under the black tank that had ridden up slightly at her waist. She knows that the bruise spreads across her left hip from where she was thrown to the floor behind the Hulk who shielded her from most of the explosion.

“Bruises are better than being dead.”

She pulls the shirt down and shivers. It’s cold in the little hospital room without the blankets, but the black tank and black sweats are better than a flimsy medical gown. She thinks Erik had something to do with that or maybe Natasha. Clint surprises her by pulling off the black SHIELD hoodie he’s wearing and helping her into it. He’s careful when he helps her maneuver her right arm into the sleeve. She bites her tongue as a wave of fire erupts in her shoulder and arm from the movement. Her whole body hurts, but she refuses to let it show. Clint looks her in the eye as he zips it up. She’s afraid he’s noticed that they were watery, but he steps away. She rubs at her eyes as he gets progressively more blurry.

“Your glasses were destroyed. Coulson says they’ll be a new pair for you in the morning to replace the ones you lost. Erik said you’d have a spare though.”

She nods.

“I have contacts somewhere in my bag. I’ll get them after I see the lab, see the damage for myself.”

Clint looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He just clenches his jaw and lets her walk out into the hall. He keeps close to her side. She’s grateful to his calm, steady presence. It helps keep her grounded. They make it into the lab and Darcy pauses for a minute looking at the wall. Shrapnel is embedded everywhere except for the area the Hulk and Steve and Thor protected them. Her throat feels tight, but she swallows past it and takes a step forward into the lab. She knows Clint is watching her.

The place is a mess. The floor is caved in around the portal, almost like the area around it was sucked into the blast. The machine has big pieces ripped away, but it is more or less intact. It’s a lot of cosmetic work that needs to be redone. But it’s actually the surprisingly few parts of the machine, the ones it needs to function, that are burnt out that makes her shoulders sag. They could easily rebuild the sound transmitter equipment with what SHIELD could get their hands on, Tony and Bruce can remake the rest but…

She tries to walk forward to see better, but Clint stops her with a gentle hand on her wrist. He motions toward the floor with his chin. There is still glass everywhere. She squats down, ignores the burn it leaves in her muscles, and lifts away one of the singed coverings. At least the arc reactor is intact. It looks like Tony just needs to make minor repairs. She stretches to lift open the faceplate of the Boom Box. It’s completely fried, but they can rebuild it. The only problem is that they don’t know what the fuck happened to make the portal implode on itself.

She knows Tony and Bruce have been back, Erik too, because they’re got diagnostics and numbers and _science_ covering an entire old school white board. They must have been herded off to get some rest by someone. Just like she’s about to be herded off as she feels Clint adjust his grip on Darcy’s wrist so he can take her hand and gently lead her away from glass and debris.

She ends up taking his arm in the hall because she’s tired and woozy, from the drugs of the pain she doesn’t know. When she gets to her room she gives up all pretenses of digging out her contacts and going back to the lab. Instead, she lets Clint help her into bed. She lets him press pills into one hand and a glass of water into the other. She lets sleep pull her under.

* * *

Two days later has her body stiff and sore, her stitches already itching, and Tony nagging her to hold the metal still as he welds. The arc reactor glows warmly as it comes back online. The bodywork looks beat to hell, but it’s kicking. They all decide a celebratory break is in order. (Bruce’s growling stomach really decides it for everyone.) They’ve been reverse engineering it as they rebuild and replace parts.

They haven’t figured out what went wrong or where, but Tony is positive they’ll figure it out if the trace their steps carefully enough. It’s enough of a comfort to devour several slices of New York style pizza. (Only Tony Stark would have New York style pizza, straight from New York, delivered to a secure military facility.) She swears she only closed her eyes for a minute…

When she wakes up, her first thought is that she’s comfortable and that she feels safe. Then she realizes exactly where she fell asleep, or rather, who she fell asleep on. She fell asleep on Captain America. She fell asleep on Captain America and wakes up with her head on his lap and him gently carding his fingers through her hair. _Eat your heart out groupies!_ Darcy adds this to her mental bucket list and crosses it off.

She plays asleep for a few more minutes before she actually feels the dull throb of her still aching body and the sting of the cut on her arm and temple. Then she remembers the dream. She groans. Steve’s hand stills. Darcy moves her head enough to see him peering down at her in concern.

“The painkillers give me weird dreams, like I was totally not in Kansas anymore.”

He smiles down at her and then helps her to sit up against him. Bruce moves next to her to take a look at the cut on her arm.

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my?”

She laughs and shakes her head. She stops because it makes her fuzzy. Steve wraps an arm around her shoulders to steady her. Someone holds out a cup of tea. She follows the arm up to Clint’s smiling face. She lets them dart back to Bruce’s medical bag, Tony and Thor’s absence, how Steve isn’t exactly meeting her eye. She narrows her eyes at Clint. She has a nagging suspicion that this is an ambush. She takes the tea anyway.

“I dreamt that Clint was wearing purple spandex and that Steve was the leader of the gay pride parade. He was riding a unicorn.”

Clint makes a gagging sound. Steve’s amused smile at her story turns into a glare at Clint. It is not a secret that Steve is all about equality; it is shocking to most, but not a secret. She can see him starting to grind his teeth. Clint glares right back at him and points at Darcy.

“That’s disgusting! I would never be caught dead in anything spandex.”

She snorts into her tea. Steve rolls his eyes, shoulders losing their tension, and helps her steady her teacup. Bruce just sighs and finishes cleaning her stitches and wraps her arm back up with fresh bandages. She finishes the tea quickly, under three sets of watchful eyes. They are worse than her grams. Steve takes the empty cup from her before she can even think to lean over and put it on the coffee table. She shifts over next to Bruce so she can put her head on his shoulder.

“Tell the other guy thanks for being my Green Knight, Sir Gawain.”

He simply lets her rest against him and smiles. Steve looks lost for a second before he gets the reference and chuckles. Clint snorts.

“Do I get a thank you? I think I should get an apology at least. I mean purple spandex is an affront to my warrior spirit.”

Darcy laughs a little at the reference, but it takes work for her to want to talk. She feels sleepy again. She frowns at him. It feels flimsy on her face. He grins back at her, soft and amused, like he knows something she doesn't. …Motherfucker, she knew it was an ambush.

“People who spike people’s drink don’t get a thank you. They get tased.”

Bruce chuckles. She can feel it. Steve stands and advances toward Clint who is already moving toward the door. Darcy waves a hand at him. He deserves to get some sense knocked into him, but then again Darcy is stubborn and she hasn’t been taking her pain medication. It makes her too groggy.

“It’s ‘kay, Steve. Wouldn’t have taken it if he didn’t make me.”

The only reason Steve doesn’t strangle his teammate (even though it looks like he wants to) is because Darcy grabs at his hand and uses it to heave herself up. She’d rather sleep in a bed than on a sofa or a super soldier, even if he was comfy. Steve does escort her to her room, taking her arm and everything. Clint’s follows them anyway, a steady presence at her side.


	9. Chapter 9

Darcy walks over to the couch where Clint is splayed out on his back, hands behind his head. She blinks down at him. She knows he’s faking sleeping. Ninja don’t sleep out in the open, and definitely not where Tony Stark can mess with you. He tends to poke or pull pranks. There is no in between and no one is off limits. She lets out a weary sigh and runs a hand across her forehead.  
  
“Either get up or move over.”

When he doesn’t move, she frowns down at him. She stops at the random thought that she’s going to give herself wrinkles over something that may or may blow up in her face... again. She watches as Clint shifts his body toward the edge of the couch, eyes still closed, face slack with calm. Darcy would have fought him if she had the energy. Instead she just gives another dejected sigh before using the back of the couch to brace herself as she maneuvers into the spot he made for her between himself and the back cushions. She’s too tired to deal; besides she’s already fallen asleep on one Avenger. She might as well try to fall asleep on the rest. Collect the whole set. She has a sneaking suspicion that Bruce would be a great cuddle bunny. She already knows Thor is. Clint looks like he will be. She tucks her head under his chin and closes her eyes.

He had been watching her lately. It’s cute that he thinks he’s being subtle. The others check up on her more than they used to, which is understandable, but Clint’s almost always in the lab now. He has admitted that he’s worried about her after the time he caught her brushing her fingers against the tender new skin on her temple and the raised scar on her arm when she thought no one was looking. She told him that she still gets a sharp ringing in her ears every once and a while. That’s when he started parking himself someone in the lab and not moving unless it’s to herd Darcy out.

And it’s probably obvious to everyone that she’s getting anxious about getting the portal working before she leaves. She only has three days left before she has to go back to New Mexico. That’s when her cover story expires. Then Jane flies in the day after. They can’t really stall for more time because Jane is too smart for that. She only bought the science Expo because Maria Hill and Coulson made Tony and Darcy take photos together to send to Jane in Norway. There is also the problem that Jane actually needs Darcy to complete her own very much permanent bridge between the galaxies.

Darcy shoves those thoughts down and touches her phone in her pocket to make sure it’s there. There’s an alarm set to wake her up in half an hour. She’s already asleep when the archer’s eyes open and a warm hand covers hers where it’s pressed against his chest.

* * *

When Darcy wakes up she's in her room. Her shoes are off and there's a thick blanket draped over her. She smiles a little and is about to snuggle back in as her weariness starts to pull her under when she realizes something. She didn't need the blanket when she was tucked in between the couch and Clint. She only needed it to trap her body heat in. With Clint blocking the cold air of the lab from her, she was warm. She’d probably would have been burning up if she’d had a blanket them. Clint put out heat like a furnace. She would have suffocated… She’s out the door pulling on whatever jacket she can get her hands on as she runs down the hall toward the lab. She nearly collides into Steve, but his broad hands on her shoulders hold her in place.

  
"Darcy, is everything alright?"

She wraps her hands around his wrists as she bounces on her toes.  
  
"I figured something out. Get Tony and Bruce to the lab!"  
  
She watches as his eyes go wide before he takes in her excited fidgeting and nods. He takes off in a run to find the billionaire and the physicist as Darcy forces herself to walk a little more sedately to the lab. She pulls off the cover ring and kneels on the floor, putting the new, salvaged, or reusable pieces back in place. By the time the door opens, she’s poking around at the spot the initial transport had cracked and exploded. It shows the newest work Erik and Bruce have made, as well as Tony’s reinforced machine work.  
  
“Why aren't you wearing shoes? Why are you never wearing shoes?”  
  
She grins up at Clint’s unhappy frown.  
  
“I think I know why this thing went all Chernobyl on us.”  
  
He's wearing his _what the hell face_ which is kind of adorable with his pout and scrunched eyebrows. But Darcy has bigger things to focus on other than an attractively confused archer.  
  
“Why the hell did Rogers yank me out of bed at 5 in the morning, _heathen child_?”

Tony looks wrecked, hair sticking up in several different directions. He seems to be focusing on the slightly too large hoodie with the SHIELD symbol over her heart and narrowing his eyes at it before he actually focuses on her face.  
  
“Because I figured it out! Never cross the beams!”  
  
He looks around her at the people assembled, thinking they understood what she was going on about and frowns when they don’t understand her either.  
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
“Ghostbusters! Never cross the particle beams!”  
  
Steve has given up looking confused. He just accepts that he might not ever get all the references. But Tony smacks the back of his hand into the First Avenger’s chest in realization.  
  
“ _Oh_!”  
  
“Yeah, _oh_! We put a ring on it before we got the pre-nup signed!”

Stark is just grinning, and while it’s slightly creepy it’s also slightly proud. Coulson doesn’t look anything other than blanked faced. She snorts.

“It wasn’t internal sabotage, so stop thinking that.”

Natasha lifts a brow. Darcy lifts one right back.

“Yeah, I know what you’ve been up too for the past couple of days. But it’s just human error. A really freaking simple human error. Honestly, I feel really disappointed in us.”

She flaps a hand at Bruce and Tony. They roll theirs eyes. Steve still looks a little lost. (He is totally going to have a talk with Phil for leaving him in the dark about the sabotage theory. Darcy would feel for Phil, but he should know better than to keep something like that from Steve.) Darcy jumps up to rifle through the papers on her desk and shoves them at Bruce.

“The tesseract energy is volatile. Howard knew that. We made it feed back into itself. We didn’t stabilize it. We didn’t give it a way for the extra energy to escape or go to. ”

She nudges the cover rings with her bare foot. Clint makes a face at her. She ignores him.

“We to keep the energy from feeding back in on itself! We need a grounding wire!”  
  
If her shaking Clint’s arm where she grabs it in excitement is odd to the spy, he doesn’t show it. Bruce nods, leafing through he papers.  
  
“To work with what we have it needs to be small and thin, but strong. It has to hold up to the excess heat the energy will put off.”  
  
Tony starts rambling off polymers and elements and things that were impossible to find. Darcy is surprised when Clint pulls out an arrow. She didn’t realize he was in his battle gear. Probably had to do with what happened the last time Darcy had the Avengers rushing to the lab. She watches as he twists off the arrow head and hands it to Steve.  
  
“Crack the hull for me, Cap.”

Tony stops talking to Bruce to watch. Natasha is crouched on the floor looking over the makeshift portal. Steve cracks the silver arrowhead and hands it back to Clint. He pulls apart the hull and removes the razor like tip that sticks out of it. It’s a thin, arrowhead shaped piece of gleaming metal. He walks over and holds it up between pinched fingers so Bruce and Tony can see.  
  
“Will this do?”  
  
She's about to ask what it is, but Tony beats him to it.  
  
“Is that?”  
  
“The same stuff Captain America's shield is made from? Yep. After Fury saw the reaction between Thor’s hammer and Cap’s shield, he had the only piece vibrainium of we had left made into this arrow. Just incase we couldn't stop Loki.”

Thor’s gone rigid from where he’s standing next to a sheepish looking Coulson. Darcy gives his arm a quick squeeze and an apologetic glance. He nods solemnly.  
  
“I do not blame you. If I could not stop my brother then he should not have been allowed to live on to carry out his evil plans.”  
  
Darcy reaches out to touch the metal but stops and looks at Tony.  
  
“You think it would work?”  
  
He looks at the shabby portal. Some parts are shiny, others are marred with dark grey-black scorches.  
  
“It should do it.”  
  
She looks down at her work. If this doesn't take... No demi god back up when the world needs it. No backdoor to Asgard. She takes a breath and pulls herself together with a smile.

“Let’s get to work.”

* * *

Everything comes together in a blur. They all work overtime. Natasha ends up ambushing her at the coffee maker and somehow talks her into going to bed without the assistance of drugs (she only let’s Bruce make her tea from now on), physical threats (Tony has threatened to cut her off which she just ignored because she had no idea what he was talking about), or super soldier strength (Steve had literally carried her to bed once because she was swaying on her feet, but then again he did the same thing to Tony roughly 3 minutes before so...). Natasha had simply pointed out that it is okay to need to recuperate after nearly getting yourself blown up. Darcy needed to sleep, and the rest of the team needed Darcy to help fix the portal.

So she went to sleep without a fuss. Tony is still harping about it the next morning.

“Why do you listen to _her_?”

“Because Natasha reasoned with me, and she talked to me like an actual, functional human being.”

Tony scoffs and slides another piece of the portal into place with her help.

“I feel like you’re directing that comment at me, young lady. I will have you know that I am an actual, functional human being.”

Darcy stops to stare at him. It sounds like he believes that.

“Tony, you had to put the suit on the kill a spider yesterday.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, and then points a finger at her.

“You wouldn’t kill it for me!”

Darcy leans back and looks over her shoulder to get Steve’s attention. He’s just shaking his head back and forth while simultaneously lifting half a ton of metal for Bruce to putter around with. Darcy stops and blinks. What does functional mean for a team of superheroes anyway? When she turns back to Tony’s he is grinning.

“Ok, so you’re an actual, functional human being given who you hang around with. But you still asked a 24-year-old to kill a spider for you because, and I quote, “it’s staring at me with its big creepy eyes, Darcy.”

Tony pops her on the nose.

“Fully functional human being, but I never said anything about being an adult.”

He stares at Darcy for a moment too long, something dark passing across his face before his eyes soften and he gives her a real, genuine smile. She feels herself smiling back at him. He nudges her under her chin gently with a crooked finger.

“But I’m working on it for you, kiddo.”

She pushes him away with a laugh. It’s cut short by Bruce and Steve.

“Alright, Darcy. All we need is the Boom Box.”

Tony helps her collect it off the table. Steve stands back with her as Tony and Bruce hooks the Boom Box back where it should be. The portal looks kind of dirty, they hadn’t been able to clean of all of the singeing and they were too pressed for time to worry about painting it, but it works just fine. Or it will work just fine. Probably. They need to test it.

“It’s done.”

Darcy blinks.

“Holy crap, it is done.”

Steve brushes his hand off on his pants.

“Avengers assemble?”

The nervous laughter that bubbles out of her isn’t what she was expecting, but Tony throws an arm around her shoulders and nods.

“Call it, Cap.”

* * *

She can feel the huge influx of power, like static electricity rolling over her skin, making the baby fine hairs on her neck rise up. This time there was no dramatic flare, no sense of terror. Natasha sends her a look and a raised eyebrow as Clint slips his arm away from were it had been wrapped around Darcy's waist as the makeshift Bifrost portal, holds. Darcy pretends not to notice. Everyone holds their breath as the bright blue light washes out the room before it dims.

There are all behind the fancy blast resistant shields in the new lab. There are all looking at the glowing portal, surprised and glad that it didn’t blow up a second time. There are also all just standing around staring at the thing. Seriously, even Maria Hill showed up this time. It’s surprisingly Clint that speaks about half a minute later.

“Okay, but how to we actually make it work?”

The look Coulson gives Clint could melt steel. Darcy takes pity on him.

“Gold Sentry, Gold Sentry, send an Asgardian right over?”

She really wasn’t expecting it to work. There’s a surge of power again, but it’s inward. It’s almost like something is being sucked up and out of the room. The blue grows bright enough that she has to shut her eyes. When she opens them it is to see fading blue lights revealing blonde hair and a dashing grin.

“Well done my friends!”

Thor rushes into the room to embrace his brother in arms. Darcy follows smiling as the visitor throws her a smile over Thor’s shoulder. Darcy all but slams into him once Thor steps away. The Asgardian’s arms tighten around her waist, balancing her hastily added weight with calculated ease.

“Fandral!”

He chuckles as he sets her on her feet, mindless of the people watching them curiously.

“My Lady Darcy, it does me well to see you again.”

She giggles as he takes both of her hands in his and kisses them.

“You alright there, Darce?”

She turns to find Clint with a gun still raised. She rolls her eyes. Thor just beams, like his friends threatening each other is a good thing. Fandral seems to take no mind. He offers the archer a wide grin.

“Fellow Avengers, may I introduce Fandral the Dashing. One of the Warriors Three and one my most dearest friends.”

Fandral bows and steps forward. Tony looks kind of thunderstruck. It’s not everyday people meet an Asgardian. FandrL claps him on the shoulder gently. Fandral has much more restraint than Thor (except with charming the panties off of women).

“I must say my metal wearing friend, I am very envious of your armor. It is quite the statement. Even Heimdall finds it impressive!”

Tony nods but darts his eyes to Darcy. She grins.

“His is literally solid gold.”

Tony looks like he wants to ask questions but Fandral claps his hands together.

“Unfortunately, I cannot stay for long. I only came to test the portal for safe passage.”

Darcy twists her hands together. Getting him here was one thing. Sending him back is another. What if something goes wrong? Or she gets sent back into a different planet, or universe, are a wall of something!? Fandral stops her worrying with a gently hand on his shoulder.

“Do not worry over me, my lady! I have faith in you and your people’s abilities!”

He doesn’t walk back the portal. He swaggers. It makes Darcy smile and roll her eyes. He sends her a quick wink as he turns to face the rest of the Avengers. He makes his cape swirl around him and rests a hand on one of the intricately detailed silver swords at his hip. He sends a dashing grin off to Maria Hill, who actually returns the smile. In fact, she looks kind of flustered.

“Besides, if I do meet my glorious death today it will be with the vision of a most beautiful warrior in my mind and the warmth of her smile in my heart.”

Somebody chokes on air. Darcy has to bite her lip at Clint’s distressed look. He can’t seem to stop staring between Maria and Fandral, who are still smiling at each other. Darcy leans closer to him to whisper.

“Dude is kind of _the_ ladies man.”

Clint nods but eyes the still smiling Maria warily. Darcy doesn’t blame him. Maria usually only smiles when she’s about to hurt someone. Fandral turns his mile on her. It’s goes fond. (Back when they met in New Mexico, Darcy made it known that he wasn’t her type, and that if he kept hitting in her she’s hit him back with something that had a lot of voltage. They’ve been bros ever since.)

“You will know the portal worked if the ring goes dormant.”

It still makes her stomach turn and her heart beat faster. Clint ushers her back, not out into the hall again, but just behind Steve. She grips at the wrist as she watches Fandral exchange a quick hug with Thor.

“Until we meet again! Heimdall, I am ready!”

The portal is washing the room out in blue and then he’s gone. The blue is gone too. Holy shit, they actually did it.

“Holy shit, we actually did it.”

Tony grins and she doesn’t even fight the hug. Instead she squeezes as hard as she dares. Tony laughs.

“You did good, kid.”

She shakes her head and laughs, pulling Erik and Bruce into a quick side hug.

“We did good.”

Phil flees before he gets pulled in too. He is kind of shy around physical intimacy. Mostly because Thor hugged him so hard when they found out he was still alive he fractured two ribs. …and Tony gave him a wet willy. So Darcy can’t really blame him. But she does need to talk to him. She had an idea, one she think’s he’ll like about the tesseract. Maybe she can get her hug then. She smiles and ignores the sinking feeling in her gut. It might be the last hug she’ll ever give him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wasn't feeling this chapter for some reason? Next chapter will be up soon though!


	10. Chapter 10

Nervousness in front of crowds isn’t a thing for Darcy. It never really has been. She can talk to anyone about anything. She sure as shit is not afraid of talking to the Avengers. She refuses to be scared of talking to Fury on principle. She’s just kind of nervous about what she’s about to say. Coulson clears his throat and gets the attention of the room. They are all sitting around the table discussing Thor’s departure. Darcy squares her shoulders.

“Phil and I were talking-”

Agent Coulson gives her a stern frown.  
  
“Don't be modest, Miss Lewis. You came to me because you wanted my opinion, but this is your idea.”  
  
Darcy bites her lip to keep from fidgeting under Fury’s quiet scrutiny.

“And your opinion, Agent Coulson?”

He doesn’t smile at the Director, but it’s a near thing. Darcy feels some of her self confidence come back.  
  
“That Miss Lewis's advice should be taken into consideration.”

One lone eye turns it’s full attention on her. Apparently, he holds Phil in very high regard. (As he should.)  
  
“People are still reeling from what happened in New York. Half of the world loves you,” she gestures toward the Avengers, “and the other half hates you. But we can't just pretend like we're the only planet in the universe anymore. There are other worlds out there, and one of them tried to take us out.”

She taps once on the table just to get some of the nervous energy out.  
  
“The tesseract should have never been here. It shouldn't be here. We're doing the right thing by sending it off with Thor and Loki.”

That gets her agreeing nods around the table.

“Just maybe we should send it off a little more publicly?”

Tony tilts his head, thinking face on. Steve leans forward.

“How?”

She lays a hand over Thor’s and squeezes. She hopes he doesn’t take it the wrong way. From the way his fingers wrap gently around hers, she knows he doesn’t.  
  
“The people see him, the one they think brought this all down on us, leave with the weapon that started it all. The rest of the universe and whoever's watching sees that we aren’t an armed threat anymore. But if anybody tries to pull the take over the world shtick again, that backdoor comes real handy, and so does the Thor we have hidden up our sleeves.”  
  
The grins that she gets from Tony is all pride.  
  
“That's down right diabolical kid.”

Darcy shrugs and locks eyes (eye?) with Fury.

“Not many people comprehend the lengths we will go to secure the lives of billions.”

He inclines his head and pulls up a map of New York.

“Stark Tower is a possible site.”

Darcy shakes her head.

“You need to separate it from Tony. It needs to be more public.”

Steve taps at the map, enlarges it on Central Park.

“I think I have the perfect place.”

* * *

When they say their goodbyes on the tarmac Darcy refuses to let herself cry. First of all, she isn’t a crier. Second of all, it’s not like she’s never going to see them again. But it’s not like she can actually act like she knows them if she does see them. She’s signed so many things, but she clearly recalls the fact that she cannot tell Jane about anything that’s happened the past two weeks, at all. She’s not even sure she will see the Avengers again. Not after this semester is over. Her time with Jane is almost up. And she doesn’t know what to do with her life after she gets her degree. There have been offers, offers she couldn’t possibly refuse. She just doesn’t want to be tied down by the government. She doesn’t like living under a microscope and being told what to say and who her friends are.

But she can’t see herself working for Tony Stark either because she literally has noting to offer him, except maybe the _I have one and you don’t_ argument. He always wants the newest things. She knows that she doesn't want to keep going in the actual science field because there isn’t anything else she wants to do with it. It’s something she enjoyed, but that’s partly because it was to help someone she cared for. A literal means to and end. But now… She forces herself not to think about things that make her sad. Leaving is sad enough. The first person she sees when she’s through the hanger door is Agent Coulson. He eyes her steadily, a genuine smile on his face. She holds out her hand.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”

He takes her outstretched hand and gives it a firm shake.

“It was a pleasure working with you, Darcy Lewis.”

She grins at him, uses the grip on his hand to pull him into a hug. The big faker doesn’t even hesitate to hug her back.

“Likewise, Phil.”

Bruce takes a step forward to shake her hand. She ignores it and hugs him instead. After a few surprised seconds he squeezes her gently in return. Natasha kisses her on both cheeks and gives her a hug so fierce that she feels her ribs creak.

“You have my numbers.”

Steve lifts his hand and makes her give him a 1,2, 3, to make sure her form is still good before letting her pull him into a hug too. It’s a full body experience. He’s every inch the super soldier, all solid muscle, but he’s _Steve_. You feel like a million bucks because it’s all so genuine. Thor lifts her into a hug and spins her for good measure. She can’t help but to laugh at him.

“We shall see each other again, Lady Darcy. Worlds cannot keep us apart, Shield Sister!”

He sets her down gently in front of the master marksman. She feels her smile wavering when she looks at Clint. He immediately spots it but doesn’t say anything, just pulls her in, and buries a hand in her hair as she clings to him. She lets go of him slowly.

“Purple spandex.”

That makes her laugh. She’s still grinning as Tony steps up. He opens his arms wide and holds his head up like he’s prepared for a firing squad and not just a hug. It makes her laugh. He manages to give her a kiss on the forehead as he lets her go.

“See you around, kiddo.”

A SHIELD agent helps her into the helicarrier and makes sure she’s strapped in. She leans over to the window to wave goodbye as they lift off. She leans back as the building disappears from sight.

“You can scratch become friends with the Avengers off my bucket list.”

She thinks about how Jane wouldn’t believe her, but that thought stops her cold. She can’t tell Jane anything. She knew that before even agreeing. She knew that even when she started her research, that if it did work she’d have to inevitably lie to Jane about it. She knew it but somehow actually knowing it and actually having to do it in less that six hours is an entirely different thing. Maria Hill gives her a friendly smile from the pilot seat. Darcy idly wonders if Maria can read minds. She’s pretty excellent at reading Fury’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first arc is done! 
> 
> Next up is Jane, New Mexico, and some more shenanigans. Darcy will find out about Tony! Clint makes a move or does he? And, as always, Darcy is an amazing badass.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.
> 
>  
> 
> Not really, it's just me ignoring the massive pile of essays I have left to grade. 
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy.

“So let me get this straight. Some crazy ass underground league of baddies is kidnapping scientists, scientists that have worked directly with SHIELD and Tony Stark, for no reason that you can identify other than the fact that they worked directly with SHIELD and Tony Stark?”

This is seriously the absolute last thing Darcy was expecting Secret Agent Man to drag his ass out to the middle of the desert, _again_ , to tell them. Coulson just shrugs.

“Basically.”

Jane starts to ask him questions about some of her associates. Erik being at the top of the list. He assures her that he is safest where he is; on a SHIELD base, 20 layers of security deep. That makes Darcy feel better until she realizes what he’s saying.

“Oh, hell no! You guys are not shipping us to some military base in the middle of nowhere! Technically, I’m not even working for SHIELD! I’m trying to finish my dissertation, and I’m not having the government tell me what I can and can’t say again! That took 14 pages out of my methods research for my _PoliSci degree_. Do you even know how much work I’ve had to do to fill in the gap?!”

Jane is trying to calm her down with half hearted shoulder pats.

“Darcy, I’m sure Agent Coulson isn’t here for that.”

Darcy wants to tell her that she’s wrong. It’s exactly like that. But she can’t. She can’t tell Jane about the portal. She can’t tell her best friend that Thor can come and go freely, that her theory actually works. She shuts her mouth and fights the urge to grind her teeth together. Coulson is eyeing her. She is itching to tase him. She barely gets her words past her gritted teeth. She’s sure her feral grin makes him at least slightly uncomfortable.

“Then what are you here for, Agent Coulson?”

Because Coulson doesn’t hand deliver news unless it’s _bad_.

“To make sure that you and Dr. Foster aren’t the next ones to get taken.”

She freezes, finger still pointed sternly at Agent Coulson who, she thinks in slight amazement, is actually smiling if the tiny quirk up at the corners of his lips mean anything. She narrows her eyes. Because that? That is definitely a smile.

“Ah, here’s your protection detail’s team leader. Dr. Foster, Miss-”

Darcy turns around to see the man standing in the middle of the lab, watching them with curious eyes and a schooled expression. Darcy manages to blink away her surprise before she turns back to Coulson and cuts him off with a forced smile as she turns to Jane.

“That’s Agent Barton. He was at the science dweeb expo too.”

Jane gives him a pleasant smile.

“Agent Barton, it’s very nice to finally put a face to the man Darcy’s tasered.”

She turns to Darcy and adds quietly, “You didn’t tell me he was cute!”

She tries to control the twitch in her eyebrow at his slow grin. Damn him and his insane lip reading skills! But she really just wants to hug him. That annoys her even more than his stupid smile. It helps that Coulson is now glaring daggers at her. Geeze.

“I was unaware that you had met before, Miss Lewis. I would love to hear how it happened.”

Darcy manages not to flinch at the look and even sends one of her own glares right back.

“He was on Stark’s security team when I met him. He might have startled me, and I might have zapped him. End of story.”

She waves it off and turns away from Jane and Coulson. She points to the men standing at attention in front of her.

“And who are these jackbooted thugs?”

Coulson’s face is empty of any expression, but Darcy can tell that he is enjoying himself immensely. It’s how she can almost see little explosions of joy behind his eyes.

“They are your and Dr. Foster’s protection detail. This is-”

He rattles off their names, but she ignores him until he finishes. She walks over to exam the soldiers that are now going to be tossed into her personal life against her will. They are going to need code names for the comms they most undoubtly have on right now. She points to the agent standing closest to her. He’s got model good looks, California blonde hair, and slate grey eyes.

“I’m gonna go with Johnny Bravo for you.”

The agent fights a smile down. Darcy immediately hates him less. The next one is roguishly handsome. Dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes, with just a hint of scruff. He’s just a bit taller than Clint and buffer.

“James Bond.”

When she gets to the next guy she can’t help the grin that breaks out on her face. She looks over her shoulder to Clint who is watching the whole thing with a very controlled expression. He’s trying very hard to be professional in front of his men. She turns her grin back on the goateed man in front of her. The guy is five shades tanner than anyone around here with a head of thick, dark waves. Lady Killer wouldn’t be an appropriate code name since his job was to keep them alive, but it could easily be applied.

“Tony 2.0.”

There’s a snort somewhere over her shoulder. When she turns to look, Clint is still standing at parade rest, and Coulson has his head in one hand. He sighs deeply. Jane looks thoroughly distracted. Coulson apparently brought gifts in the form of S.I. tech. Darcy narrows his eyes. So Secret Agent Man wants to play dirty, huh? She opens her mouth, she’s about to rib him about the Cellist and how she had to flirt with some DHL guy for 20 minutes over the phone to get him to not deliver a package of some risky lingerie that Tony sent to her on Coulson’s behalf. Then she promptly shut her mouth because she can’t possibly know about any of that. Not with Jane in earshot. Coulson must see something in her face because he quickly motions for the agents to dismiss with a sharp nod of his head.

Darcy lets the noises fall away into white noise. She chooses to focus on Jane’s happy smile as she digs through the box. She pulls out a tablet, already booted up and ready to go. There’s even a Nyan Cat background. Darcy focuses on that. Jane laughs at her exaggerated heart eyes and gimme hands. If Jane notices the tension in her shoulders, she doesn’t mention it. She really can’t over the squeal she makes over the new science equipment in her hands. Speaking of…

“SHIELD’s been pretty generous with the care packages. The last one came with pop-rocks. You trying to buy us out?”

It’s true. Before the aliens in New York thing, they maybe got one package three months after they requisitioned it. Jane had usually built her own thingamabob by the time it hit their doorstep. After, it’s been pretty much every week, sometimes twice a week (once with directions that said throw the pervious box out because it apparently didn’t meet the engineers expectations). Seriously, Darcy is on a first name basis with Charlie, their UPS guy, now. She has a standing invitation to his kid’s ballet recitals. Coulson raises a serious eyebrow. Darcy raises one back. Jane sighs and glares at them both, one hand on her hip, the other wrapped around something that looks like the inside of a toaster.

“We’re getting the equipment we need, before we need, without any cost to us. As far as I’m concerned, this is just payback for all of the shit they took and returned broken the first time.”

Darcy just looks to Coulson. He shrugs. Jane shrugs. Darcy visibly flails at her best friend.

“Seriously, how are you not upset about this? We’re being forcibly babysat.”

Jane lifts a box and wordless passes it off to an agent, Johnny Bravo, who just appears there to take it. She taps something into the tablet and grins up at Darcy.

“I wanted to rebuild that quantum wavelength analyzer. Now we can do that _and_ get a show.”

And honestly, Darcy cannot fault that logic. Jane grins. Darcy glares at her harder. Coulson shoves a piece of paper at her. Clint, the damn ninja that he is, shoves a pen at her. She takes a second to catch his eye. He nods. It’s barely noticeable, but he’s telling her to sign it. He’s telling her that it isn’t something as tiny as Coulson is making it seem. She grumbles but signs the paper and adds in a tiny frowny face. Jane rolls her eyes, but that’s what Darcy meant for it to do. That’s what the Darcy before would do. Spout off about damning the man, being independent science ladies, and dragging her feet the entire time the higher ups at SHIELD made her do things that they think is good for her. Clint rests a hand on her shoulder in the pretense of needing to balance himself as he takes the pen and signs his own name next to Coulson’s. Some of the tension leaves her shoulders.

It’s all over in a matter of minutes really. They showed up, Darcy put on a show, the agents filtered in and situated themselves in her and Jane’s lives without doing much of anything Darcy could see, and then Coulson is shaking Jane’s hand. When he turns to Darcy it’s almost automatic the way her arms raise to hug him. The downward twitch of his lips makes her freeze. She adjusts minutely and ends up offer her fist to bump.

“Thanks for the new shiny I guess… and you know, the new tech too.”

Clint and Jane roll their eyes in sync. The lavish smile on Darcy’s face feels wrong. The Resting Agent Face on Coulson’s does too. He knocks his fist into hers gently.

“It was good to see you again, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy nods and waves him off flippantly even though all she wants to do is hug him.

“Likewise, Secret Agent Man.”

Jane sucks Clint into helping her move boxes, but not before he catches her eyes and give her a sad smile. She turns away from Coulson’s retreating form and shoves a handful of papers at Bond with an order of match the colored sticky notes. She takes a perverse kind of joy in knowing that none of the sticky notes are actually colored coded. She’s just putting years of the government hard work and money to the test. They should thank her, really.

* * *

She’s fuming out at the desert on the roof when she hears him sit on one of the lounge chairs. She left Jane downstairs with the rest of the goon squad an hour ago. She doesn’t believe for a second that they haven’t known exactly where she is the second she left the room. Clint doesn’t say anything, and she can’t tell if that helps or makes everything worse. He’s letting her think and collect herself. He’s letting her try to get a grip on the emotions and thoughts buzzing around inside of her. She hasn’t had anyone give her that consideration in a long time. She’s had to keep everything inside, bottled up, and sealed tightly shut for _months_. She hasn’t had anyone to talk to and now that she does, she doesn’t know what to say.

“I know I signed those contracts or whatever, but I couldn’t just tell her some completely bogus story. Jane deserves more than that. It’s just, it’s so hard to lie to her. She’s my best friend, the closest thing to a sister I’ve ever had. And you’ve seen her give me the doe eyes today. I almost caved so many times… but I know the truth would hurt her so much worse.”

She sinks down in the lawn chair opposite of Clint and stares at her hands before she finally looks up to him watching her. His blue eyes are filled with understanding, and she has to look away because he gets it. He gets it better than she’ll probably ever know.

“It’s killing me, Clint. Some days I feel like I’m drowning in it.”

He stays silent and still looks at her, understanding washed in with something else, something like sympathy.

“Darce, there isn’t anything I can say to make this right… but I’ve been where you are. I’ve had to lie to assets and agents for the sake of my country. Luckily, the people I care about have the same clearance as me.”

His wry smile gets a smirk out of her before he continues leaning forward speaking quietly.

“But I could never do what you are doing. You might not think it, but you are protecting her. Keeping the world safe is just a bonus.”

She grins a little at that and wipes away the fresh sting of tears that she refuses to let fall. He waits for her to nod.

“You’re not sinking darlin’, you’re swimming. It might feel like shark infested waters, but you got me watching your 6. You’ve got _all of us_. You’re gonna come out of this intact, alright?”

She almost cries at that because he really does understand. He knows that she feels alone in this and helpless, that she worries about the aftermath, about Jane not accepting her reasoning or the government’s hand in it all. But the Avengers have her back, _The Avengers_. She clears her throat a little to get her voice back in control. She straightens her shoulders and lets out a rough sigh.

“You really know how to give a good pep talk, Barton.”

He leans forward to give her a grin.

“Who do you think gives Banner a talking to whenever he’s feeling a little green.”

The sound of her laughter spills out over the quiet desert. It doesn’t make anything all right, but it feels like maybe, eventually it’ll be okay. She punches at his shoulder.

“I’ve missed you, Clint.”

He smirks.

“I know.”

Her second punch lands much more solidly.


	12. Chapter 12

Darcy walks out of her room (which was actually one of the recording studios remolded with an en suite bathroom, which was all once Jane’s room, who never used it, so she gave it to Darcy so she wouldn’t have to blow the minuscule amount of money her partial student internship paid her) and into the open floor plan living area and freezes. So it wasn't a bad dream. She and Jane get to be babysat by a team of assassins because some nutjob is kidnapping smart people. Hip-hip hooray!

She pulls her face into a smile at the blank looks from the men sitting around the table (and in Clint’s case sitting on top of the fridge) greets her with. Jane is still asleep. She won't wake up until she smells coffee. Darcy doesn't know how the women can smell coffee through a building, the ten feet of open air between the lab and her trailer, but she does, and it's better than any wake up call Darcy had ever tried. Darcy fiddles with her hair, thrown into a haphazard bun, and decides _fuck it_. If they are going to be lurking around for "an indefinite amount of time," then Darcy needs to set up some ground rules.  
  
“This is how living at Darcy's works. 1) You’re here when the food is done? You eat. 2) Coffee. You take the last cup you better make a new pot, or I will taser you in the balls. 3) Do not, under any circumstances, touch the brown sugar cinnamon Poptarts or you will be introduced to Dr. Foster Hyde. The gods, Asgardian or otherwise, will not have mercy on your soul. 4) Write down your preferences and any food allergies because I’m jacking the money Coulson gave you for Red Bull and Twinkies and going grocery shopping. The government can suck it if they think I’m footing the bill for four freaking ninjas when I can barely afford to feed myself. 5) I will share Netflix, but you touch my queue, and you die!”

They all stare at her blankly before Clint vocalizes that he likes bacon, Cheetos puffs, and pizza, which Johnny Bravo jots down on a small notebook and pen that he pulls from nowhere. _Freaking ninjas_. She ignores them as they compile a list and turns to start a pot of coffee.

“I hope pancakes are okay because that’s what you’re getting.”

They make no arguments. Tony 2.0 even helps her get the ingredients together. She tries not to be too freaked out that he knows where everything is.

“Did you guys like poke around while we were asleep or something?”

She immediately holds up a hand and waves them off with her eyes closed.

“Nevermind. I really don’t want to know.”

She busies Johnny Bravo by making him sort papers into piles by the color of Jane’s scribbled notes in the margins. That’s how the sort things around here (and it took James Bond an annoyingly short amount of time to figure that out yesterday). Clint helps and that’s the only reason she gives them both a cup of coffee. She knows that Clint takes his milky. She does a splash of sugar and milk for Johnny Bravo. She has half a second of remorse for not using his real name (she thinks it’s Walt Ha-something) then promptly ignores the feeling when his eyes go wide.

“Whoa, mama.”

She doesn’t even think he’s making a joke. He looks immensely surprised. Clint hides his grin in order to taste his coffee. Then his eyes go wide too. She smirks at them and motions for Tony 2.0 and Bond to fill up a mug as she sips from her own. The rest of the ninjas give her murmurs of gratitude laced with awe.

“I remember the first time Thor had a cup of my coffee. He tried to throw the microwave out of the window.”

Clint squeezes her shoulder gently as the rest of the guys’ laugh. The moment is cut off by Jane’s very small voice from the door.

“He was always very enthusiastic about things.”

Darcy freezes at the crack in her friend's’ voice, and she immediately wants to punch herself in the face.

“Fuck, shit, damn it, Jane. I’m sorry.”

Jane's voice is very tight and very controlled when she walks over to the coffee pot and pours herself a cup, ignoring the makings of pancakes laid out on the long counter.

“No, it’s okay, Darce. It’s fine.”

No, it isn’t. Jane’s face is pinched and closed off. She walks past them without a hello and straight to her desk where she immediately picks up a pen and stars to rework the formulas she was experimenting with last night. The soldiers are watching them closely. Clint is watching her closely, she can feel it, those familiar eyes on her, but she refuses to look his way. She speaks quietly knowing that the men in front of her can hear her clearly.

“She kind of lost the love of her life, and she misses him immensely. That being said the music that is about to be played is in no way, to be reflected upon my character. Now make yourselves scarce because she doesn’t need an audience.”

They all shove out quietly and quickly, guzzling down their still scalding hot coffee, and go to where ninjas go to do their ninja things. Darcy opens her dual desktops, silently thanks Stark Industries for all the new gear they’ve given Jane since the government broke most of their old shit, and turns the speakers up as the Broken Hearts mix comes on. She takes a deep breath and opens the cabinet to get a box of pop tarts. It takes her an hour and a half of subtle maneuvering for Jane to eat. It’s not her best time but she manages it.

It takes the rest of the day and a very awesome discovery in her equation to pull Jane out of her funk about Thor. When they’re eating dinner, she tells Darcy that she is an amazing best friend. Darcy smiles and says something like takes having one to be one as her heart caves in her chest. She bites her lip to keep herself from doing something extremely stupid like blabbing national security secrets. She notices that the other six boxes of pizza they’ve ordered are missing from the Island in the kitchen. At least they take orders well.

* * *

The second day Darcy is still getting used to the feeling of someone always having eyes on her. It wasn’t that bad when she was working on the makeshift Bifrost, but then again she was inside a secure military facility and the Avengers were always around. She knows that there is always an agent shadowing her and Jane, leaving one to rotate out for rest. Clint is the only one that is almost always working and most visible because he’s team leader and because he also knows them (her) the best.

She’s doing her normal routine of hitting up the 7/11 for an Icee before errands because even at eight in the morning the temperature is already hitting 90 degrees. That’s when she starts getting a strange nagging feeling at the base of her spine. She doesn’t ignore it, she trusts her gut, but she does make sure her taser is in her messenger bag and the panic button is safely tucked in her pocket as she makes a show of trying to find exact change at the counter when she pays for her drink. (She cracked up laughing this morning when Clint handed her a bright, sparkly purple panic button/GPS tracker that was a little bigger and thicker than a quarter. Jane gave her a side eye and tugged her coffee cup away from her. Johnny Bravo had no qualms about drinking after her, either having read her file or just being unfazed by sharing bodily fluids with a stranger. With his line of work, Darcy would suspect both.)

She ducks into the bookstore to pick up more graph paper for Jane, forcing herself to look completely lost in thought. When she walks out of the store with the paper and a new pack of obnoxiously neon dry erase markers, she notices a man in cowboy boots and a worn flannel. It’s the standard dress for Puente Antiguo, and there have been an influx of new arrivals since Thor. But what catches her attention is the brand name of the shirt and the fact that the cowboy's boots are clean. Carhartt is the brand of choice in this small farm town. She’d be willing to ignore that if not for the fact that walking around town for more than ten minutes would have those boots muddy and scuffed in no time. She’s only caught half his profile, mostly shoulder and the edge of a cheekbone, but she knows that he’s been careful about where and how he’s walking.

Without a second thought she ducks into the alleyway between the pet shop and the hardware store. She plants her feet and slips her taser in her left hand. She knows that she won’t get a second chance. The guy comes into the alley and Darcy’s fist only connects with his nose because he didn’t know he got made. He goes down on his knees with a curse and gets a taser to his neck before he even manages to get a hand on her. He’s groaning on the ground, and Darcy’s got her panic button in her hand before Clint comes sprinting down the alley. Darcy ejects the empty cartridge as Clint pulls the man up to see his face. His eyes narrow and he pulls his fist back to punch the man in the face again. It’s a pretty violent wake up call, but it’s fitting for the agent in question.

“Damn it, Barton. Have you been training her?”

Clint glares down at Agent Rumlow. Agent fucking Rumlow. Darcy shoves the taser back into her bag before she decides to waste another clip on him.

“No, Steve and Natasha have.”

Rumlock goes dead silent. Clint takes the moment to reset his nose. Darcy gives him a happy grin before rounding on Rumlow and glaring at him as he groans through the pain.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Rumlow uses his shirtsleeve to mop up the blood running down his chin. He doesn’t answer. Darcy turns to Clint.

“Does his nose still look a little crooked to you?”

Clint grins and takes a step forward. Rumlow holds up a hand.

“I’m just following orders.”

Darcy narrows her eyes at him. Clint doesn’t offer to help pull him to his feet.

“I think we better call Coulson.”

* * *

“Agent Sitwell thought it would be a good idea to have an sleeper agent as back up.”

Darcy narrows her eyes and glares. Coulson looks just as unhappy as she is.

“I was not informed about this. If I was, I would have alerted you to the change immediately.”

He’s got a slight twitch going in his left eyebrow. Ohhh, somebody is about to get their ass whooped by Secret Agent Man.

“The change in mission parameters could have resulted in the detriment of my team and could have put the assets at risk. Not to mention that the agent in question started to operate outside of his SOP, got made by an asset, and, as stated on his file, is to not be in _any_ contact with the asset that made him.”

Agent Barton’s voice is ice cold. He’s all quiet fury. It’s scary as fuck. Jane approves by grinning at Coulson like a mad women. Darcy rolls her eyes and slaps at Clint’s bicep with the back of her hand. She feels a pang of guilt at the abuse because it is a very nice bicep.

“I broke his nose and got to taser him. He’s already on his way back to HQ for a serious slap on the wrist that I would pay good money to get footage of. I’m okay with ending things there. Unless you can send him to the base you guys have in the Arctic Circle.”

Coulson blinks.

“You don’t have a high enough clearance for that information.”

Darcy can feel the grin splitting across her face. Clint rolls his eyes at her. At least he’s Clint again.

“What I’m hearing is that you _do_ have a base in the Arctic Circle.”

Coulson frowns and somebody snorts behind them. She thinks it's Johnny Bravo.

“I assure you that Agent Rumlow and Agent Sitwell will be given the appropriate consequences for their actions. Director Fury is… not pleased.”

This time Clint snorts.

“That’s an understatement.”

Coulson ignores his comment.

“We’ll be in touch.”

The screen goes black. Darcy rolls her eyes. Secret Agents and their need for dramatic exits. She turns to Clint with a smirk. He immediately goes on alert.

“So about that base…”

He sends her a sharp grin.

“Unless you want to see it first hand, I suggest that you stop poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong.”

Jane, having checked out of the conversation after Coulson promised to handle it, is already back to work. Clint follows her into the computer room.

“How else is a girl supposed to have a little fun around here?”

Clint just shakes his head and throws a smile over his shoulder. Darcy smiles back. It’s already more fun with him around, but she isn’t going to be telling him that anytime soon.


	13. Chapter 13

They get into a routine about a week in. Darcy is doing her second Wednesday Slurpee run. Tony 2.0 is on what Darcy has dubbed Shadow Duty. He’s the one out of sight and out of mind today. She strategically places the drink carrier in the middle of the open lab and points her chair, so she never loses sight of it. James Bond takes a huge gulp of his strawberry Slurpee like brain freeze isn’t even a thing. Clint looks far too giddy about his pineapple raspberry monstrosity. He pauses with a straw halfway to his mouth when he catches a look at her icy beverage of choice.

“Coke Icee again? Live a little, Lewis.”

Darcy flips him off. Jane pokes him with an ink pen, so she can retrieve her cherry Slurpee. She sends an air five to Jane for having her back.

“Darcy has a bit of a curse when it comes to Slurpee’s.”

Clint blinks. Darcy rolls her eyes.

“The first time I had a Slurpee I broke my wrist falling off a skateboard. I noticed a pattern from there. Every single time I had a Slurpee something bad would happen to me up to and including paper cuts, flat tires, losing a scholarship, power outages, locking my keys in my car, computer crashes, and an alien invasion.”

Clint slowly lifts his hand to his coms, a barely noticeable earpiece, and speaks to the rest of his team.

“Be advised, Sparky is not allowed to have Slurpee’s for fear of critical mission detriment.”

She narrows her eyes at him. She hates the codename she’d been dubbed with. At least Jane had got a cool one in deference to her job: Star Lady. Johnny Bravo, who has neon green white board marker all over his left hand (because Jane has made him write her equations on the board because she thinks he has prettier handwriting (his handwriting is probably worse that Jane’s)) smirks at her.

“Solid copy.”

She throws an eraser at him; he dodges which distracts Clint from the pencil she throws at him. He grabs at his sternum like it actually did damage. Her snickers are cut short once she notices that they both distracted her from seeing Tony 2.0 sneaking his blue raspberry Slurpee away. She just wants to catch one of them in flagrante, just once.

* * *

“Sector 4 is clear.”

Darcy checks the time on her monitor.

“Sector 6 is going to be getting some hot action in 5.”

There’s nothing but regulated breathing over the line. They are all looking to their CO to see how to handle their current issue. Clint sighs.

“Tony 2.0?”

She grins but keeps on typing data into her computer. Jane is unaware that Darcy is even talking, let alone talking to herself or so it seems. She’s elbow deep in algorithms.

“You should really keep your boys sharp, Hawkeye. It was so easy to swipe it while he was in the shower.”

“We should have just given her one.”

“That’s why Johnny Bravo is my favorite.”

Darcy grins. She can practically feel Clint’s scowl.

“You won’t be so mad in 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.”

The line is silent again until…

“Holy _shit_.”

After the whole Thor thing, quite a few people moved to Puente Antiguo. A billionaire that had a hard on for alien gods built a huge mansion about 20 clicks outside of town. He employed a housekeeper to look after the place. She was Russian, a model, and enjoyed drinking down at Earl’s, the only bar in town, on the weekends, and cleaning the pool topless after sunbathing. They can thank Darcy later. 

“Are you playing Fruit Ninja?”

She doesn't know where Clint is, but he is definitely not enjoying the show with the rest of his team. Darcy blinks at her computer screen, well one of them. One is open to the star charts Jane needed some data input on. The other screen is where she’s playing fruit ninja.

“If you guys didn’t want me multitasking then you shouldn’t have given me dual desktops and a high speed Internet connection.”

Somebody snorts. It sounds like Johnny Bravo. Another comm comes online, a gentle blip.

“I think Darcy stole my earpiece.”

She just laughs into the comm as she demolishes a 7 fruit combo.

* * *

A few days later, she’s finally finished lugging some equipment in from the back of the jeep. And when she says she, she actually means Clint and James Bond. She smiles at their backs (and backsides). Clint, with his super ninja senses, must feel it because he turns round and frowns at her.

“What?”

“Nothing, just thinking how nice it is to have paid slave labor. You jackbooted thugs are good for something after all.”

He rolls his eyes, but he still keeps the door open with his foot for her while keeping a solid grip on the box he's hauling in. Darcy thinks it accents his biceps nicely.

“You mean protecting your lives isn’t enough.”

She follows him into the lab, ready to remind him of just how capable she is at defending herself (hello, she tased _him_ ), when she catches sight of Jane and Tony 2.0. There are papers everywhere, and Jane is ranting at her white board. Darcy goes on high alert because Secret Agents are trained to not show fear. And Tony 2.0 is looking kind of scared. Secret Agents also have been trained to withstand anything and everything, like torture and tiny, momentarily insane scientists. They are more adept to handle this than Darcy ever was. She grabs Clint by the back of his shirt and starts backpedalling to the door.

“Hey, Jane? Going grab some dinner. Be back soon.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply just keeps on dragging Clint behind her until she’s sure he's following her. They make it halfway into the town when he finally speaks.

“So that was Dr. Foster Hyde.”

She just keeps walking, his steps steady beside her.

“Yep. I told you not to let the pretty fool you. She’s a nice person most of the time but every once and awhile the astrophysicist nut job that she really is comes out to play. It’s usually close to that time of the month or, you know Easter, but she just goes completely cyborg for a while. She’ll cool off in like an hour.”

He pauses in his stride for a split second as he turns that over in his head.

“Easter?”

 Darcy shakes her head and opens the door for him. Fuck gender roles.

“The story requires chicken enchiladas and a black cherry float, at least.”

He shakes his head but grins as she motions for him to hurry up and get inside with her hand.

“I think I can manage that.”

She grins at the back of his head and doesn’t make fun of him taking the corner booth so he can have his back against two walls and his eye on all points of entry. He’s buying her dinner after all.


	14. Chapter 14

Clint stalks out to where the van is parked in the middle of the desert. James Bo- _Agent Henson_ is trying to help Darcy into the back of the van, but Darcy is having none of it. She shoves a clipboard full of messy papers at him. The same one she was beating him with not even 3 seconds ago. He’s pretty sure she only stopped because it would have been another thing that Clint could yell at her for.

“Go bring this to Jane before I sprain my other ankle kicking you in the ass.”

Clint ignores her glare and lifts her from her reluctant lean against a rather concerned looking agent and into a bridal carry. She smacks his chest but can’t really put much force behind it from the angle. Small mercies, she punches like a Mack truck. She ends up glaring at him, speaking through her clenched teeth, as he covers the few feet to the van and into the back of it.

“I am going to make you pay for this, Barton.”

He gently settles her down onto the bench seat running along the side of the vehicle. The throw pillow he tries to grab ends up smacking him in the face accidentally before Darcy gingerly lifts up her foot and ankle so he can place it underneath. He knows that she knows that he could have easily avoided it. By the time Clint has her boot halfway unlaced, she’s grimacing already. He squats down to look at the injury better. He slowly eases her foot out and onto the pillow. The hiss of air she lets out matches the grip of her fingers on his shoulder.

“Darcy, how in the hell did you manage to twist your ankle this bad?”

She has her mouth set in a tight line, refusing to answer him, for all of 7 seconds before she curses as he slowly peels the sock off of her foot. The ankle is already red and swelling so much that the ribbing of her thick wool sock is imprinted deeply into her skin.

“I tripped on James Bond. I was charting some weather patterns, and he was lying on the ground doing ninja things. He was in full blackout tactical gear, and I didn’t even see him, okay?”

He snorts, but it’s short lived as she yelps when he touches two fingers very carefully to the inflamed skin. It doesn’t look broken, just sprained. He digs around in the medic kit that he finds under the seat and starts to pull out gauze and a snap and shake ice pack.

“Well, you messed it up pretty bad. You’ll need to stay off of it for a few days.”

She grumbles. He grumbles right back.

“I can’t even let you out of my sight for a few hours. My record will be shot to hell if an asset keels over on my watch by her own doing.”

She flails her hands, something she does in exasperation he has noticed, at him.

“Full blackout tactical gear! I don’t even think he was breathing!”

He rolls his eyes but focuses on the task at hand. He tosses her the instant ice pack to get ready. He tries to wrap her ankle as gently as he can while listening to his comms to make sure Jane is okay with the other two agents. They only have about an hour left before they pack it in and head back to the lab. Clint knows that if Jane knew Darcy got hurt then she’d already have the van in drive and pointed north toward the hospital. But he also knows that Darcy would argue about Jane missing vital observations on a night this clear and a sprained ankle is not a big enough deal to warrant a visit to the ER. He’s got medical training anyway. He’s slipping a butterfly clip in place when he notices that she’s toying with something in her hand.

“Whatcha got there, Klutzy?”

He really has to give it to her. The girl can really make her eyes say _fuck you_. She tosses the object she was toying with at him.

“I found it when I fell.”

It’s a black stone arrowhead. It’s not uncommon in this area, but it’s in relatively good condition. He takes some wire reinforced twine from the shelf near his shoulder. He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s securing the bracelet to her wrist with an efficient sailor’s knot. She toys with it silently while he finishes adjusting the wrap on her ankle.

“Thanks, Clint.”

He shrugs.

“You can probably find someone to actually make it into jewelry.”

She pulls her wrist into her lap, her fingers running along the dulled edge of the arrow.

“I like it this way.”

Any further conservation is cut off there because Jane is storming in, as much as a person can storm into an equipment packed Pinzgauer, and punching him in the shoulder for not telling her that Darcy was injured, punching Agent Henson in the shoulder for being the actual cause of said injury, and poking Darcy in the shoulder for actually sustaining an injury while walking in the middle of “a flat ass desert” and scaring her.

They all learn quickly that Darcy can talk her way out of anything (even a stern lecture from a pissed scientist), and that for someone all of 100 pounds and 5 feet nothing, Dr. Jane Foster can throw a damn good punch.

* * *

The next day brings up a few complications. Like Darcy rigging up two rolling chairs into a moveable couch and commandeering one of his operatives into being her personal driver. Johnny- _Agent Wells_ looks like he’s having fun rolling her around. He smirks at her mush jokes, but he is keeping a careful eye on her still swollen ankle as he pushes her around.

About a day later Clint draws his gun on some poor kid because Darcy conveniently forgot to tell him she acquired a messenger boy. She karate chops the back of his knee because she can’t get enough leverage for a punch. (Again, small mercies.)

“Stop terrifying the locals, Barton.”

The said local hands the delivery, 6 cups of frozen beverages, to Agent Wells with a terrified look.

“Thanks, Stuart!”

He nods to Darcy and books it out of there. Clint glares at her if only to make Agent Wells stop smirking. Agent Henson giggles. Clint shoves his stupid Slurpee at him. Darcy is humming happily as she finds her Icee in the mass of drinks. She must feel his eyes on her because her grin gets wider. He steals her drink before she can grab it.

“What? It’s tradition, Barton. Besides, he owed me after the whole peeping thing.”

He fights to keep his face impassive. Because if she catches on that he’s interested, she won’t give him enough details. Details he needs to fix that kid’s _mistake_.

“Let’s just say it doesn’t take you long to remember to shut the curtains at night when you live in a house made up of floor to ceiling windows.”

Something must give him away because she rolls her eyes, smacks him in the chest, and manages to steal her Icee back. He’s getting rusty. That’s the only reason why a civilian completely disarms him, so to speak. (That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.)

“Don’t worry, I sat him down and had a nice little talk about that, and I did that thing you do with your eyes.”

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“What thing?”

She shuffles until her shoulders are propped up better by the backrest of the chair. She points at her eyes. Which isn’t safe to do when you’re using the plastic straw from your Icee to do it with.

“The thing. You know the _I will burn everything you love to the ground_ thing.”

He frowns. Mostly because he wanted to use the look on the kid. He makes a mental note to pull whatever he could find on the Stuart kid anyway. She pats at Clint's arm.

“It’s terrifying, I swear.”

She snaps her fingers and points at her desk.

“Onward, noble cruise director! We have reports to file, and I need your help to make up as many space puns as possible. It makes the science dweebs at SHIELD eyes’ twitch. It’s hilarious.”

All he can do is share an incredulous smile with Agent Wells. Jane’s reports are never boring at least, thanks to Darcy.

* * *

Clint gives her the all clear to put full weight on her ankle in about a week. Her immediate reaction is to stand up on a table. Jane just smiles at her antics.

“Now, let’s celebrate! Drinks at Earl’s!”

Earl’s is the local watering hole that isn’t actually owned by Earl but by a retired veteran by the name of Derek Richards who grins when he sees Darcy walk in. That isn’t surprising. Everyone smiles at Darcy because everyone likes Darcy. He wants to say it’s because she’s funny, but she’s not just funny. She’s sharp, with a whip fast whit, and she’s downright snarky when she isn’t being sarcastic. But she’s also kind and caring. She’s disarming. She takes you by surprise because she is always the exact opposite of what you expect her to be.

So he nods in greeting at Derek who is bartending along with a pretty blonde. Darcy wanders over to the bar, and Jane leads their little rag tag group to a large booth at the back of the bar. It’s got good eye lines of the place and a nice enough view of the little stage in the middle. He surveys the building like always, glancing at exits like he’s just looking at the décor, checking for weapons and marking possible targets. Darcy smirks at him as she hands him his beer from the collection she’s hauling to the table for the boys.

“Anybody gonna try to start some shit?”

He takes a drag on the cold beer and watches Agent Henson as he silently evaluates the scene around them while listening to Jane explain how no one really knows why it’s called Earl’s. They are both still on duty tonight and while they can hold their liquor they won’t be drinking more than this. Tony- _Agent Valdez_ is already next to the housekeeper Darcy had… introduced them to more than a week ago. Darcy should have just given him the call name of Lady Killer even if it wasn’t necessarily politically correct for the Op.

“Not if they know what’s good for them.”

It takes about 15 minutes for somebody to hook up the karaoke machine and another 10 after that (and a horrible rendition of Tainted Love) for Darcy to find her way to the stage. Agent Wells is already up and near the stage. Agent Henson, Jane’s shadow for the evening, is scanning the bar for any sign of a threat just like Clint is doing. Everything has been quiet since they got here (except for the incident with Rumlow), but that could easily change. Nothing looks sketchy, and he doesn’t sense anything out of place. He relaxes a bit into his seat.

“Good Evening, Puente Antiguo!”

The whole bar answer her back, which makes her grin grow even wider.

“I’m Darcy Lewis, and I’ll be your entertainment for the next three minutes. This is my favorite guilty pleasure song, hopefully it’s some of yours too!”

The opening chords of the song make him grin. Darcy winks at him from across the room.

 _“Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me_  
_I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed_  
_She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb_  
_In the shape of an "L" on her forehead.”_

The entire bar is singing along before she reaches the chorus. By the end of it, she grinning ear to ear and accepting the applause and compliments like it’s nothing. She slides into the booth next to him with a grin. He can’t help but return it with a shake of his head.

“Smash Mouth? Really? I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.”

She nudges at his shoulder and accepts the neon pink drink Jane slides over to her before wandering off again. She’s heavily invested in one of the rancher’s discussion about field sod, ever the scientist.

“It’s a guilty pleasure, Barton.”

She gulps a good bit of the drink before she sets it down and turns on him with a wicked sharp grin.

“What’s your guilty pleasure song?”

He leans forward to whisper to her quietly.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

Either those drinks Jane’s been giving her or the shots she did at the bar (that she thinks he doesn’t know about) reach her because she throws her head back and laughs, loud and happy. Nearly half the bar turns to stare. Clint can’t blame them. Darcy’s always something to see.

After more singing, quite a few hours of dancing, and a lot more alcohol, they all manage to make it back to Jane’s lab without any incidents. (There was moment when Darcy was dancing with a local and he grabbed her ass, but before he could even move the kid was holding his nuts and the entire bar was laughing.) He loses tabs on Darcy in under a minute of stepping into the building. He doesn’t panic because he’s secured the perimeter and none of the outside alarms were tripped. There’s only so much a drunk 24 year old could do in a town this small. He finds her wrapped in a blanket on one of the lawn chairs on the roof. She’s staring up at the stars. She waves happily at nothing, probably to Heimdall.

He’s seen some things in his line of work, and he’s learned some things he never thought were possible. Being okay with an immortal being that can see everything in 9 universes is something that he’s okay with. Aliens, demi-gods, highly advanced energy sources that can control your mind, just another Thursday. His team consists of his best friend, an honest to god Superhero, a figure straight out of Norse mythology, the freaking hulk, and some nutjob in a metal suit. That’s his everyday normal. That’s probably why Coulson stuck him on this detail.

Looking after Darcy and Jane? It’s a babysitting mission. He knows it. His team knows it. Coulson gave it to him because he’s still not sure where Clint’s head is at after New York. To be honest, some days even Clint doesn’t know where it is. But Hawkeye, Hawkeye always knows. It’s easy to fall into the soldier, the superhero. It’s hard being Clint again, but damn if Darcy doesn’t help. (Damn Coulson for figuring that out too. Even though Tasha had something to do with it. He _knows_ she did.) She knows when to push and pull. She fights when she should run, speaks her mind when others would be silent, and has the biggest heart of anyone he’s ever met. It’s easy to smile when she’s around.

As if she can read his mind, she smiles at him. She’s drunk as hell. But her smile is wide and warm, and she looks happy to see him. God, he’s going to miss her when he has to leave.

* * *

Clint looks like he’s got something on his mind when he follows her up. Drunk or not she knows he won’t let her wander off by herself for long. He takes his job seriously even if he cuts her a lot of slack. She’s quite aware that the only reason she still has a communicator is that he hasn’t taken it back yet. So she lets him have his moment, as much as her mouth can allow.

“So what’s your song?”

He gives her a cool look, like she’s getting too ahead of herself. But she’s warm and smiling and happiness makes her bones feel light. Well replace happiness with alcohol… She grins at him.

“Come on, you heard me sing mine. Just tell me your go to guilty pleasure song.”

She waits him out until her eyes starts to get heavy. She’s about to drift off when he starts singing. His voice is just a little rough but strong, solid, it has soul, character. It's god damned beautiful is what it is.

 _"Even though the moment passed me by, I still can't turn away  
All the dreams you never thought you'd lose got tossed along the way  
Letters that you never meant to send lost or thrown away  
Now we're grown up orphans that never knew their names  
We don't belong to no one  
That's a shame  
If you could hide inside me, maybe for awhile,  
and I won't tell no one your name  
And I won't tell 'em your name_  
  
_Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far_  
_And did you lose yourself way out there?_  
_Did you get to be a star?_  
_Don't make you sad to know that life is more than who you are?_  
_Grew up way too fast and now there's nothing to believe_  
_Reruns all become our history_  
_A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio,_  
_And I won't tell 'em your name_  
_And I won't tell 'em your name_  
_And I won't tell 'em your name_  
  
_I think about you all the time, but I don't need the same_  
_It's lonely where you are_  
_And I won't tell 'em your name."_  
  
He doesn’t look at her as he sings. He looks out over the desert, half turned away. He only looks at her as he sings the last lines. She sees emotions flit across his face, too fast for her to catch. His voice doesn’t waver or crack, so she knows that it's old emotions, old ghosts that have had time to rest and scar over. But it leaves a hollow ache in her chest. She wants to chase those memories away for good. She wants to kiss him, but instead she swallows and gives him a flirty grin. She ignores how rough her own voice is.

“Jesus, Barton. You’ve been holding out on me.”

He shakes his head with that little crooked smile of his and goes back to looking out at the desert. She tugs her blanket around her tighter. For all she’s tried not thinking about it, it’s going to suck when he leaves. It’s helped having him here, to just look over and know that he gets it, that he can take some of the weight for her by just being here. It’s going to hurt when he has to go. Darcy isn’t stupid. SHIELD can’t afford to keep an Avenger in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico on a glorified babysitting gig. He needs to be with his team kicking ass, taking names, and saving the freaking planet. She’s been bouncing back and forth between being pissed at Coulson for doing this to her and fucking grateful that he sent Clint here.

She toys with the arrowhead wrapped around her wrist. She misses all of them, even Tony, but the last thought before she falls asleep is that she’s going to miss the fuck out of Clint.

* * *

She wakes up in her bed with the mother of all hangovers. Those fucking Sunset Slammers always bite her in the ass. She manages to drag herself to the kitchen. She slumps into the stool next to James Bond and lays her face on the cool counter. She sighs as it rests there. The walk from her bedroom was much brighter and louder than she remembered. James Bond deliberately drags his mug across the counter. Darcy groans.

“I hate you.”  
  
He grins at her the smug bastard. She groans into the counter and rolls her head so her forehead lays against it. She pokes Tony 2.0 in the side where he sits next to her. It’s more like in the hip, but who cares.  
  
“You abandoned the celebration. Did you at least get some?”  
  
The brunet sips his coffee and ignores her, but a smirk tugs at his lips. She grins and pokes him again.  
  
“At least one of us was getting some action. I haven’t been laid since Stark fired himself from his own company.”

Somebody chokes on their coffee. Darcy doesn’t give a shit. She groans into the counter and wishes that her head would stop pounding to the beat of Turn Down For What.  
  
“I don't know, Darcy. Your hips were not lying last night.”  
  
She lifts her head enough the glare at Johnny Bravo. But he's sitting in front of the glass doors facing Main Street and the sun is so freaking bright right now. She makes a pathetic sound in her throat. She only lifts her face when she hears a coffee mug being placed in front of her. She gives Clint a smile when she sees the jet black liquid in the cup and smell how strong the brew is. Today won’t suck if he keeps them coming.

“Now, if only somebody would turn off the sun…”

She tilts her head enough to see Jane, insanely high alcohol metabolism Jane, working away at her desk.

“You know our rule.”

Darcy sighs and drags her coffee cup closer.

“Intergalactic space portals first, world domination second.”  
  
The boys have the decency to laugh quietly at least.


	15. Chapter 15

Darcy is quite aware that the first thing listed in her file under her name is her birthday. She knows that everyone in the lab knows exactly what day it is. She tossed and turned all night, her stomach in knots, over it. Today is her birthday. Today is her birthday, and she hates it. What the files also say is that her parents died on her birthday. Someone ran a red light. It was a head-on collision. They died instantly. They never felt a thing. That’s what the police, and paramedics, and the doctors told her. They said it like it was a good thing, but her parents were dead. They were dead because they were rushing to pickup her birthday cake. Her parents were dead. How was that a good thing?

Her Grams and Papa understood. Her birthdays passed quietly the few years she lived with them. She was too busy being tossed around the foster care system for a year after they passed to even think about her birthday then, and her friends in college were pretty good about not making a big deal of it. Jane, though, Jane was pretty awesome. She never made the day feel any different, but she still managed to give her something that made the day not suck so much. It was usually a frilly coffee in the morning when they were still at NM State and some kind of over sugared breakfast treat. The time she got the donut the size of her head while they were passing through Oregon was pretty kickass.

She’s prepared for happy faces and birthday wishes. It makes her stomach ache. When she walks into the lab to find everything perfectly normal, she wants to smack herself. Of course Jane would have told them to keep their traps shut. Jane always has her back, and oh, there’s the crushing guilt she has for lying to her best friend. Jane gives her a quick hug as she passes her on the way to the coffee pot. Darcy gives her a smile and heads straight to her desk. She throws herself into her work, and it helps. It helps with the old guilt and the new. The agents leave her be but they are always just there. Tony 2.0 never lets her mug go empty, James Bond is there with whatever she needs before she needs it, Clint is always at the edge of her vision and rests a gentle hand on her shoulder or arm when he passes. By the time the sun is setting, there is Chinese take out taking over half of the kitchen and enough beer to fill a swimming pool.

It’s probably one of the better birthdays she’s had since, considering. Even Johnny Bravo makes an appearance. It’s nice.

“I know it’s not exactly tradition but…”

Jane is pulling out a huge purple monstrosity of a cupcake. It looks like Barney barfed all over it. She grins.

“It’s perfect, Jane.”

She blows out the giant glitter soccer ball candle. She looks around the room.

“Seriously, today was great. Thank you.”

One by one they file out of the room after giving her a hug, and in Clint’s case, a kiss on the cheek. At least two of them are doing a perimeter check. There was something that was making their comms ping back and forth yesterday that Clint says is normal. The way he has been acting isn’t anything but. He’s started shortening the rotations so all of the agents are on duty most of the time. He’s started to wear more of his Hawkeye gear too. She isn't too upset about that at least because _damn_ , does the man have nice arms. Jane catches her eye as she bites into the cupcake.

“So, you and Clint have gotten pretty close.”

She chokes on buttercream frosting and devil’s food.

“Wh-what?”

Jane steals a bite of her cupcake. Darcy slaps at her hand. Jane rolls her eyes.

“You and Clint. Don’t tell me you don’t see it.”

Darcy throws a spring roll at her. It lands in a carton of left over ginger chicken.

“We’re friends, Jane.”

Jane pokes her with a chopstick.

“You like him. He’s hot. You should do him.”

“Oh my god, Jane. Don’t say shit like that!”

She grins.

“Why? Because it’s true?”

Darcy throws her cupcake wrapper at her. Jane just swats it away. Damn her for having beauty, brains, and fast reflex skills. She hisses at her.

“No, because we literally live with secret government ninjas!”

Jane just shrugs and sips her beer.

“Doesn’t make it not true.”

Darcy shoves the rest of her cupcake into Jane’s mouth. They both end up on the roof with purple icing on their faces, noodles in their hair, and a fair share of black pepper beef down Jane’s back. The kitchen’s a mess. They’ll get it in the morning. Jane is crashed out on one of the lounge chairs. Darcy is poking at the dying fire with a smile on her lips. She doesn’t hear him, but she knows Clint’s there.

“So do all your birthday parties end in a food fight?

She grins over her shoulder at him.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t had a birthday party in almost 15 years.”

He sits down on her lounge chair and gives her an incredulous look.

“Seriously?”

She shrugs.

“After my parents died…”

He nudges her shoulder gently after she trails off. He doesn’t seem to care that a piece of mini corn sticks to his shirt. Bless his stupid adorable face.

“It didn’t seem to matter anymore. I get it.”

She feels the weight of guilt wrapping around her shoulders again. For the first time in a long time, she actually wants to shrug it off.

“But tonight, tonight was good. Best birthday is a long time.”

He smiles and picks a bit of cabbage out of her hair. She laughs as it sizzles on the embers when he tosses it in.

“So what would your perfect birthday look like?”

She looks up at the sky, throws a wink to Heimdall just incase he’s watching, and turns back to Clint. Who is smiling at her antics. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head but actually thinks about his question.

“A party, a cake, drinks, live music. Maybe a piñata or something.”

She shrugs and looks over to where Jane is sleeping peacefully with purple buttercream like eye shadow across her left eyelid.

“The best birthday though? It would be one where I would be surrounded by all the people I care about.”

And Clint? Clint gets what she’s saying. He pulls her into his side without a word. She hugs him back, and rests against him.

“Speaking of friends, I got a message from Stark.”

She laughs.

“Oh yeah, what did he want?”

“He says that the equipment Jane wanted should be here soon, and that he sent something extra special for the birthday girl. He said to tell you that it rhymes with phaser.”

Darcy pulls herself away from Clint, even if he is ridiculously warm against her, and… She has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Clint still catches the aborted movement.

“What?”

She motions toward his cheek were some frosting has smeared across it.

“Purple is totally your color.”

He frowns and drags a finger across his face. He looks at it for a spilt second before he starts grinning. Darcy is immediately on her feet.

“Oh, hell no.”

Clint gets to his feet slowly, eyes tracking her every movement, still smiling.

“You’re already covered head to toe in _General Joe’s_.”

She waves a finger at him and puts Jane’s sleeping form between them.

“Not the point, Barton. It’s my birthday!”

He steps forward slowly. He’s out right grinning now. Damn it.

“That’s exactly kind of the point, Darce.”

She doesn’t care that she wakes Jane up because she’s too busy trying to dodge Clint. He’s too damn fast and eventually, with Jane tripping her, has Darcy pinned and is smearing icing all over her nose. She laughs until she can’t anymore. The booze and running for her life must have finally hit her because she falls asleep with her head in Clint’s lap. He’s been picking food out of her hair for the last few minutes. It’s only his training that keeps him from jumping at the sound of Jane’s voice. He kind of forgot she was there.

“This is the first time she’s laughed this much on her birthday since I’ve known her.”

He doesn’t say anything. Neither does Jane. The way she’s watching them, the way she’s watching him, says it all.

* * *

When she goes for their normal 7Eleven run she decides to break her rule. After last night, she feels like taking a risk. The blue raspberry Slurpee is delicious. When she gets back to the lab, Jane raises an eyebrow. Darcy just raises one back. Clint eyes the drink warily like he’s thinking of wrapping her in bubble wrap and keeping her away from uneven ground and sharp objects. She frowns at him and holds his strawberry Slurpee over the sink. He throws up his hands and takes a step back. His minions pretend they aren’t laughing. She grins at him and places the cup on the counter. When she turns Jane is there with a knowing smirk. Darcy flips her off.

“So when is Stark supposed to send us that swag?”

“Out for shipment today. UPS truck spotted within 400 clicks.”

Darcy grins around her straw and goes back to turning Jane’s science jargon into real people words.

She is so giddy she all but runs to the door to meet the UPS man when she hears the truck pull up. Except the guy at the door isn’t Charles (their UPS man). He’s some scary looking guy all decked out in a black military uniform. She’s aware that there’s the sound of glass breaking behind her and yelling. She drops her bright blue Slurpee and tries to run back into the building, but he already has her by the throat.

He pulls her roughly against him, twisting her violently to get her back against his chest, his hand replaced by a blade, and a gun out over her shoulder. She hears a few bursts of gunfire and, thankfully, Clint’s team shouting all clears. She can see them kicking weapons away from unmoving hands. Johnny Bravo is pulling Jane away, trying to get her out of the line of fire and preventing her from seeing the scene unfolding in front of her. But she still sees Darcy and screams and kicks at him, trying to get to her.

“DARCY!”

Johnny Bravo has to hoist her over his shoulder to carry her away. Tony 2.0 goes along with them. James Bond looks pissed as hell as he disappears into the shadows, doing his ninja thing. His look has nothing on Clint’s. He’s dropping down from whatever rafter he was hanging on like liquid, so fluid she can barely comprehend it’s happening. His bow is already in his hand and an arrow is already drawn back. He looks like he wants to shoot the guy’s face off. The problem is that Darcy’s face is way too close to the bad guy’s face for that. She hears her earpiece go off. It’s Tony 2.0 and Bond talking to Clint.

“No clear shot.” “We can’t move without him spotting our positions.”

Their voices are calm but loud. Darcy tries to keep her breathing even as she raises her hand and makes a harsh stopping motion. Clint stops walking forward, like the gun trained on him isn’t a deterrent. She makes another hand signal opening and closing her hand like a mouth and then something that she hopes he picks up as a telephone and not aloha. He narrows his eyes at her but seems to understand. She still has her earpiece in. Mr. Asshole might overhear.

Clint speaks so quietly that she has to strain to hear it.

“Do not shoot until you get a clear shot. I repeat a _clear_ shot. Radio silence. Darcy has a comm.”

Hearing the dead quiet on the comms after a week and a half of hearing constant chatter and voices makes panic rise in her throat. She tries to squirm but the blade biting into flesh stops her. She lets out the hiss behind clenched teeth as sharp, hot pain scatters through her synapsis. She can feel a trickle of blood falling down her neck. She lets herself go still. Clint takes a step forward and Darcy starts talking to try to distract the sweaty guy using her as a shield.

She tries to keep her eyes trained on Clint. She tries to keep her face calm even though her heart is thrumming like crazy in her chest. Storming the keep is always a last resort. This was a suicide mission. Mr. Asshole is expecting to die, and he doesn’t seem to mind if he takes Darcy with him. Instead of letting the crippling fear win, Darcy sucks in a breath and does what she does best. She talks.

“You see this is why I always liked DHL more! FedEx is okay, but those assholes always seem to play hacky sack with my packages. I mean yeah, it must get boring with nothing to do all day but shuffle boxes around in vehicles with no a/c. I would want to take my stress out on a few boxes. I would hate my job too. But come on! Moonlighting as a criminal isn’t a big leap. But you gotta do what you gotta do right?”

She slowly brings her hands below her chest, where he can’t see them and unties the arrowhead bracelet from her wrist. She grasps the blunt edge of the arrow and grins at Clint to give him a sign.

“But you shouldn’t quit your day job just yet. Criminals don’t get medical.”

She jams the arrow into the flesh of the back of his hand, _Bourne Identity_ style, and uses his shock to tear his arm away from her neck. She falls to the gravel and at the last minute uses her forearms to take the impact instead of her hands. She hears the guy’s gun go off twice, but hears the sharper hiss of air move past her. She doesn’t have to turn around to see the arrow sticking out of the guy’s eye socket, but she does anyway to make sure he’s down. Then she turns around to see Clint running toward her, left arm bleeding and held stiffly at his side.

“Clint! Jesus, sit down or something you’re bleeding!”

He ignores her as she pummels into him. He staggers but remains up right and lifts the hair away from her neck almost frantically.

“So are you.”

She feels his calloused fingers wipe at the thin line and shows her the bright red blood. She ignores him. If she can talk and breathe and isn’t making gurgling noises, then she’s okay. The fact that his arm is bleeding and there are holes where there should not be holes takes precedence over an enlarged paper cut. She takes the bow from his death grip. He grimaces but lets her. By the time she has his right arm over her shoulders Johnny Bravo, actually Agent John Wells, is already running toward them.

Tony 2.0, Agent Alejandro Valdez, is talking into his sat phone while James Bond, Agent Tuck Henson, checks them over. His eyes widen when he realizes that Darcy is holding Clint’s bow. When he goes to take it from her, she draws it back. She knows how touchy Clint is about his bow. She leans it against the wall where they are both helping Clint sit up against. Jane is there between one blink and the next, tackling her. She waves off Agent Wells letting him know that she is okay.

“Oh, Clint!”

Jane quickly looks him over and grabs Wells.

“There’s a medical bag in the cabinet next to the bathroom. Come help me!”

Darcy slumps down next to Clint as they scatter; let’s her head fall against the building behind them, adrenaline still pounding in her veins.

“I am never allowed to have a Slurpee ever again.”

Clint laughs and lets his shoulder slump against her.

“Dually noted.”

Valdez is talking into his earpiece while Henson is scouting around the building to make triple sure they are secure.

“The Quinjet is about 9 minutes out. Medics are onboard with Coulson.”

Darcy nods because Clint is trying very hard to focus on his breathing, which is heaving and strained. That worries Darcy.

“You’re not going to keel over on me are you, Hawkeye?”

He strains his neck out as he swallows. It only makes him clutch as his vest tighter. He pants a little more but stays sitting up right.

“I might if someone doesn’t get this Kevlar offa me.”

She sits upright and sees the sharp glint of metal sitting right below his left peck. The second bullet is lodged there. Darcy starts looking for a zipper when Clint catches her hand, breathing short and fast. He swallows and Darcy can see Clint fall away and Hawkeye stand at attention. Hawkeye’s voice is calm and controlled.

“Emergency Medical Relief path. Left side, right below my rib cage. After that, you’re gonna to need to lift it off.”

She stares at him for a second. The first words that pop into her head is _that’s going to hurt like a bitch._ But he knows it will. She knows it’ll help him breathe better. So she nods for Henson to help her. She leans close to him and reaches his left side. She tries not to make him move his bloodied mess of an arm, but he does with a grimace to give her the room she needs. She finds the thin, almost zipper like material and pulls. The suit seems to blow out around him. His breath blows out against her neck in a rush. She can hear the deep breath he takes, can feel his lungs expand where they are pressed together. In that second it’s the best thing she’s ever felt.

She falls back down next to him, hands and arms shaking as the adrenaline starts to sputter out. Henson takes over and carefully starts to pull the vest off. He does it quickly and neatly, trying not the jar the injured arm, but Clint still curses as it forces his arm to move. He leans back against the wall gulping down heaving breaths of air. Darcy looks him over.

She lifts his shirt enough to make sure the bullet lodged in the vest didn’t pierce his skin. There’s already a huge bruise ricocheting out over his ribs and chest where the bullet caught in the high-tech Kevlar. It looks like a messed up target. His arm is bleeding freely again. Her panic only dies down when Jane kneels next to them with Wells. It’s only when Jane starts to firmly press gauze into his arm to staunch the flow of blood that Darcy notices how tightly Clint’s fingers are digging into the material of her jeans.

She realizes that he’s been gripping her this way since she leaned across him to free him from his tactical gear. Once Henson has a firm hold on the wound and the blood doesn’t seep through the 6th stack of unbelievingly white gauze, Clint’s fingers relax their hold. But he keeps his hand there; resting just above her knee, firm enough to let her know that he’s still there. She tries to keep her breathing even because she knows the beginning signs of shock, and she can handle that herself. The team needs to focus on Clint. Clint who is leaning heavily into her, but still not letting go of her leg.

“It looks like it went through and through, but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Everything blurs together after that. It feels like hours when in all actuality the Quinjet lands in a few minutes. Suddenly, Clint is in the medic’s hands, and Coulson is making the rest of the team lug the unconscious and dead goons into the back of the jet after he hugs Darcy so tightly her ribs ache, and Jane is giving her debriefing. And Darcy’s hands are shaking so badly.

She uses what Natasha taught her and slips away. She goes to the one place that she can breakdown without being afraid of being overheard. The door to her bathroom is barely closed when the urge to vomit hits her. She rushes to the toilet and heaves. Her lunch is swimming in a violent, electric blue.

 She pulls herself up on shaky arms and reaches to flush. She makes it over to the sink and brushes her teeth almost automatically. She stands there afterward, feeling like she’s choking but breathing so heavily that she’s hyperventilating. She doesn’t even realize the door is opening until she hears her name being called gently. It’s Tony. He’s standing there in his under the Iron Man gear. He looks pale and spooked. Darcy sees a glimpse of what she must have look liked to Clint and whatever was holding her together is just gone. Her eyes water and her breath comes even shorter.

She hears the door shut and Tony scoops her up before she crumples to the ground. He smells like metal and ozone and Armani and something a little like coconut. The familiarity of his smell must make her feel safe because she starts to sob, huge wracking waves of tears and fear and a tiny bit of joy. Everything seems to hit her all at once. How stupid she was to treat this like an adventure, ignoring orders to keep her safe, to keep them all safe, picking and picking and picking away at the wall between them, merging the line between asset and assassin. She got Clint shot, twice.

“He could have died. Tony, he could have _died_.”

Tony stills against her for the slightest of seconds before he goes backing to rocking her gently on the bathroom floor, one firm hand running up and down her back, over her hair, murmuring completely innate things things to her that somehow helps calm her down.

“I know, sweetheart. I know. But he didn’t. Neither did you.”

And that tips her over again. Because yeah the thought crossed her mind but it was Clint watching her six. It was Clint. He wouldn’t let her die. She trusted him to keep her safe, and he would never let her down. The burn in her throat echoes into her chest, and she sags against Tony’s chest, the arc reactor oddly cool against her tear-splotched cheek. Slowly, she starts to pull herself together. Her crying slows, and her sobs trail off into hiccups.

Tony tells her the story about when he was taken hostage and about Dr. Yensen. She starts to cry again when he starts to get misty eyed. He tells her to put her big girl panties on and that makes her cry harder because she can’t stop laughing. Eventually she’s cried herself out, and Tony still hasn’t let her go. He helps her up and tucks her into bed. She half expects Coulson to come knock on her door and demand she be debriefed. But it never comes.

“The medics said to give this to you. It’s a mild sedative.”

She shakes her head and pushes the pills away. But she does take the glass of water he offers.

“How’s Clint?”

He motions toward the glass in her hand. She drinks some more under Tony’s careful watch.

“Pumped full of painkillers and O positive.”

She sighs and slumps into his side. He makes her drink the rest of the glass before helping her up and into her bed. She even lets Tony press a kiss to her forehead. He seems to need it just as much as she does.

“I’ll be outside if you need me, kiddo.”

She nods into her pillow and closes her eyes. They’re heavy and raw from all the crying she did. She pulls the comforter tighter around her.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I don't have as much downtime as I'd like anymore, I tried to fit in a lot in this chapter. Also, when life happens, it tends to happen fast and hits you hard in multiple ways. 
> 
> P.S. This is set in an alternative universe. It does not follow MCU timelines/plots as stated in chapter 1.

She wakes up again early in the morning feeling like she’s choking. Tony is there before she can get her breathing back to normal. He tries to hold her again, but she fends him off with her hand and the book on her nightstand. Who knew Harry Potter could be used as a weapon? It takes chucking it at his head before he gets that she is fine.

“I don’t think you are.”

Her voice is still rough from the crying and from sleep, but it doesn’t crack like she expects it too.

“I’m telling you I am. It was just a nightmare. I’m good.”

But Tony keeps giving her that look, the one that says he knows she’s bullshitting him. Because she isn’t okay. Her brain is trying to cope with the fact that she almost died a few hours ago, that one of her closest friends almost died, and that she can’t ignore it. But she can learn to come to terms with it and accept that it happened. This is a part of that, and she’d like to have that happen sooner than later. He’s sitting on her bed now giving her that look, but he nods and lets it go. He smoothes out the corner of the navy blue comforter under his hands.

“You think you can go back to sleep?”

He gives her a frown when she shakes her head no but offers her his hand.

“Then I guess we can tell you now. Clint’s been bitching about waking you up for the last hour.”

She glares at him as he tries to help her out of the bed. If something is happening, they should have woken her up! She swats his hand away but lets him wrap an arm around her shoulders, and lets him lead her into the main room. Her and Jane’s guard detail are still there. Coulson is gone, but he left behind some of his team as a precaution. They are all gathered around one of the desktops watching a SHIELD encrypted feed of what looks like a battle. Her guys hedge out the new goons and make space for her and Tony. She isn’t surprised to see Clint sitting down in a desk chair. He looks better, not as pale, but there’s a hard look in his eyes.

He tries to give her a reassuring smile but either because of the pain, exhaustion, or frustration that he’s not there to help his team, it falls into a scowl and a nod. She understands when she finally sees and hears the almost muted sound of the feed they’re watching. It’s coming from Natasha’s night vision goggles. Darcy hears her give a short command and Steve answer. She sees a flash of muscle and silver, Thor, and sees Bruce jump into a sniper’s nest and bring it down. Tony speaks softly to her.

“One of the guys your guard detail got spilled the beans. They found Dr. Doom’s base. Hammer was helping him.”

Darcy stiffens because all she knows that Justin Hammer is the leader of the _We Hate Tony Stark’s Guts_ fan club. She knows how much Tony wants to crush him, without the Iron Man suit, and that’s saying something.

“Why aren’t you fighting with them?”

He holds her closer.

“Conflict of interests.”

She steps closer to the screen and rests a hand on the back of Clint’s chair as Natasha’s goggles get whitewashed. Russian tumbles out of her mouth, but she’s moving away from the explosion, guns firing, so Darcy forces herself to take a breath. Hammer’s robots do some damage but blow up pretty spectacularly. Tony mutters under his breath about fucking assholes and improper uses of something as lubricant when one of the robots takes Bruce down. It’s more than a few minutes before he’s standing upright again.

Darcy’s heart feels like it’s stuck in her throat. Natasha is moving too quickly to catch much on camera but they see enough solid kills on her part to know she’s holding her own. It’s not until she hears a new voice, that she understands how good Bruce, Thor, and Natasha have it with the minions. That was just the diversion. Natasha swivels up to the helicopter taking off, Hammer tucked safely inside, while Dr. Doom is walking away from a gleaming heap of metal on the roof of the main building. Darcy knows the design of the suit enough to know who’s inside of it. But she doesn’t know if the person inside is okay because they aren’t moving.

“Rhodey.”

Tony flips open his phone and pulls up something that look like monitoring stats. It shows a steady heartbeat that should relieve her. Instead, it makes her stomach bottom out. This isn’t a SHIELD feed. This is Tony hacking into a SHIELD feed. This is them trying like hell to keep quiet as to not wake Jane passed out on one of the couches in a very zen, xanxed state. This is them watching the Avengers scraping along without its hawk and heavy metal.

She rests her hand on Clint’s shoulder as his hand flexes out on his thigh when Nat gets thrown over because she didn’t have anyone watching her back. Thor rectifies that problem quickly with an impressive display of lightning. When they get alook up again, it’s to Steve tossing his shield directly over War Machine as Doom sets off something like a bomb that lets off a wave of massive energy, something she’s never seen him do before.

“Fucking Hammer.”

It’s must be a new toy developed by the war mongrel, and it’s the most horrible thing he’s ever made that actually works. The blast that erupts causes Natasha and the other Avengers to duck for cover. When the feed comes back up, they’re all running to Steve who is laying yards away among rubble and metal and debris. Steve who is bleeding. Steve who is not getting back up. Steve who is not answering his comms. Darcy’s throat closes around a scream. The sound catches in her throat at the last minute as she takes a half step toward the screen. It goes black as Coulson’s voice filters through. It sounds controlled and calm. But Darcy knows better.

“This is an unauthorized protocol override. Transmission terminated…”

Then in a smaller voice, “I’ll keep you posted.”

Darcy doesn’t want to look at anyone else, so she stares at the blank screen. She keeps her eyes focused there because she doesn’t want to have another breakdown. She doesn’t want to cry. There isn’t anything left to cry. She feels a hand over hers and looks down to realize that she’s been gripping Clint’s shoulder so hard that her knuckles are white. She tries to loosen the grip but his hand holds hers in place. She forces herself to look up and at him. His eyes are bright, tired, but bright.

“They’re all fine, Darce.”

She nods her head, but he doesn’t let her fingers go. He ducks his head a little to look her in the eye. They gleam with determination and promise.

“They’re fine.”

She nods again and squeezes his hand before she looks over to Tony who is throwing his phone, access denied screen glaring bright red and orange to the table, hard.

“I need a drink.”

She doesn’t know how he does it, but Tony pulls a bottle of whiskey older than her and Jane combined from nowhere. Clint tries to take a glass. Darcy kicks him. Tony smiles. It’s small and fleeting, but it’s still a smile. Clint pouts at her.

“Hey, I got shot today.”

The whiskey burns the taste of bile out of the back of her throat.

“I know.”

He wraps a hand around her wrist and squeezes from where they are sprawled against each other on the couch. Darcy takes a breath and takes another sip. She watches Tony sit on the floor in front of the love seat Jane's taken over and starts taping away at a tablet with a drink balanced expertly on his knee.

“Darcy, I’m not going to apologize for doing my job.”

She passes her glass over to him.

“I know. I wouldn’t ask you to.”

He sets the glass on the floor and pulls her into a one armed hug. She rests her head on his shoulder and watches as Tony quietly takes his own form of revenge on Hammer by buying up every single company he gets his materials and resources from and tanking his stock little by little. She feels helpless and exhausted. She just wants to go back to sleep. Instead, she sinks more heavily into Clint's side.

“Hey, Tony?”

His fingers don’t stop moving, but he does look up to meet her eyes.

“Wake me up when we have news.”

He smiles at her.

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

She does have the intention of going back to her bed, but Clint is warmer and just as comfy. 

* * *

She’s still half asleep when she drags herself up from the couch and Clint’s good arm to see Steve standing there looking around the lab calmly. She ignores the sudden rise and fall of voices around her. She crosses the living room and buries her face in his chest. He doesn’t miss a beat just wraps his arms around her and drops his chin to her head.

“Darcy, it’s good to see you too.”

She lets him wrap her in warmth and safety and strength. She murmurs into his chest.

“Everyone else okay?”

He presses his cheek close to her ear and whispers.

“All ten toes and fingers functioning and accounted for.”

She sighs, lets the fear go, and sinks further into his embrace before she pulls back and smacks him hard upside his head even though it stings the crap out of her hand.

“I don’t care if you really are technology illiterate, learn how to use your damn phone if your comms go to shit.”

That gets the whole room laughing. Steve smirks at her. Darcy tries to stay mad. She really does, but she feels her stern frown slipping. He’s alive. He’s here and alive. They are all alive. Another wave of exhaustion hits her hard. She turns and heads back to her room.

“If any other freaks try to start shit today, tell them I said to fuck off.”

Tony’s cackle is the loudest. She knows Clint’s shaking his head with a silent smile on his face (and she knows he was awake the second Cap walked into the room and kept faking to give them privacy). She thinks she even hears Steve’s voice in the laughter. It makes her bones feel light.

* * *

Darcy is a pretty sharp person. But in the last 24 hours she’s been held hostage, seen one of her best friends get shot for her, and watched helplessly as the rest of her friends fought for their lives with a complete psycho and his mad scientist buddy. Her brain is still catching up with the fact that Captain America cooked her breakfast, and Clint can carve apart a cantaloupe with one hand in under a minute. So it takes her a while to actually notice that there isn’t a reason for Tony to even be here, not if Steve came to relieve Clint and his team. Jane had taken that news surprisingly well (meaning she’s asked him to bend things into shape, so she could cut down on production time and bend over in general to get a look at his back side. Darcy cannot fault her priorities or her ability to just roll with the punches.)

“Tony, not that I don’t enjoy your company or your whiskey, but why the hell are you even here?”

Clint keeps on shoveling eggs into his mouth. Steve lowers his glass of orange juice to the counter and gives Tony his undivided attention. Tony looks offended. Darcy narrows her eyes at him.

“You’re my daughter. There isn’t any other place I would rather be right now.”

Darcy hasn’t ever had a panic attack before. But she’s never been held as a hostage either. There’s a first time for everything.

“Stark, what the fuck are you talking about?”

He looks at her blankly. He turns to Clint and then to Steve, and when they give him nothing, he looks back at her.

“You’re my kid. You were in trouble. I came to make sure you were okay. That’s what parent’s do. Right?”

Darcy stares at Tony and looks him over from some sort of brain injury. But he is giving her the same look except he’s smiling. He’s smiling at her, and it’s so soft and fond and gentle that she kind of wants to smile back. The thought of smiling flies out of her head the second she remembers the first time seeing him smile like that. She pinches the bridge of her nose hard, rests one hand on her hip, and starts to pace behind the kitchen island separating them.

“Tony, tell me that the papers you handed to me at SH-”

She catches Jane learning forward in her chair, like this is her granny’s soap opera, out of the corner of her eye.

“The c _onvention_ weren’t adoption papers.”

His smiles falls and he frowns. Steve turns very, very unhappy eyebrows on the billionaire. Clint starts tossing a knife around in his hand. Jane takes it away from him.

“I asked you if I could keep you, and you said sure! And you signed the papers! YOU SIGNED THEM!”

She glares at him, finger raised at him in anger.

“Are you telling me that you asked to adopt me while we were working together in the lab, when we were soldering?! I thought you were quoting Casper! And I’m pretty sure I signed my first born away in those disclosure agreements! I saw your name on the papers and thought it was some kind of contract Stark Industries had come up with to pay for expenses! I DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE ADOPTION PAPERS!”

They all watch as Tony just kind of deflates as Darcy paces faster, hands tangling in her hair. It takes a full three minutes before she speaks again. Her voice is calm. She leans against the island, hands bracing against it.

“Why? Just why? Why me, and why now?”

Tony smiles fondly at her.

“You’re me with boobs.”

She snorts at that but stares him down until he actually gives her the answer she’s looking for. Steve elbowing him helps too.

“I see a lot of myself in you, Darcy. And let’s face it I’ll probably never have kids. I mean it would be great. Pepper would be a great mom-”

“So what I’m a test run? Figure out if you even want to play dad? Get rid of me when you get bored?"

The heat behind the words tell the men in the room worlds about her past and old wounds that still hurt. This time Clint takes the knife away from Jane. Tony gives her a stern frown.

“NO! I would never do that to you.”

He pins her with such a hurt look that she feels like looking away, but she doesn’t. She holds her ground.

“God, Darcy, I would never do that to you. _Never_.”

The way his eyes go hard with fury make her realize that he’s read her file, probably did some digging of his own. He knows about the foster families, and her first adoptive parents that ditched her when it got too hard raising a rebellious, angry, hurting teenager instead of sticking it out. He knows about the two years after her grandparents died that she spent floating between foster homes after foster home until she hit 18. He knows, and she feels her heart clench. He knows. And he still wanted her.

Clint is standing beside her, a solid presence at her side. It gives her the strength to look up and meet Tony’s gaze, now softened and honest.

“You deserve someone looking after you, Darcy. I do see a lot of myself in you, I do. But you are special to me. I just… I just want to take care of you.”

She kind of feels her eyes prick at that, but she will not cry because she is so pissed at him right now. He laughs softly at her stern frown.

“I really thought you knew. I sent you all the equipment for your research and Jane’s. I paid for your tuition. I sent you the credit cards and set up the bank accounts. Pepper wouldn’t let me get you a Maserati even though I knew you’d love it.”

She waves a hand in front of his face to get his attention. He’d gone a bit starry eyed at the end.

“First of all, SHIELD dropped all the tech off. I thought it was from them! And I thought the credit cards were junk mail. I tossed them! And Fury agreed to pay for all my school stuff.”

She’s never seen Tony pissed off. Not really. Not until now. He stands to his full height with his brown eyes blazing fury.

“Like _hell_ is that one eye bastard paying for anything for you! I am not letting him hold that shit over your head.”

She deflates a bit in the face of his anger. He really does care about her. Enough to try to rip Fury’s other eye out of his head. She wonders what else he would do for her. The next thought turns her stomach sour.

“Did I win the award because of this?”

Tony shakes his head so fast she thinks it might pop off. The thought amuses her greatly.

“Hell no! You won that before I had ever even met you. Your work blew all those dweebs out of the water. And on a side note…Metallica as a control, how could you not be my daughter!?”

She sits down heavily at the counter. Her world is titling on her axis as her next thought comes steam rolling through. She feels nauseous. It shouldn't even be possible, but it is Tony freaking Stark...

“Oh, god. Are you, are you, biologically-”

Tony makes a face and waves his hands in the air.

“You aren’t! I did a paternity test!”

She stands up and paces. Tony, Steve, and Clint watch her. Jane is glaring at Tony like she can set him on fire with her mind. Darcy keeps pacing. She turns to face them, opens her mouth, closes it, and walks all the way to her room. Her door slamming rattles the glass walls. Tony turns to Clint effectively ignoring the disappointed look Steve is giving him and the murder vibes Jane is sending his way. The idiot just grins.

“I think that went well.”

Clint shakes his head and walks away. He doesn’t want to explain to Pepper why he stabbed Tony with an arrow… again.

* * *

Darcy doesn’t come out of her room until long after dinner. She grabs a slice of cold pizza off the carton on the table. She glares at Tony as she sits next to Clint on the couch.

“I’m not calling you dad.”

Tony’s whole face lights up, and he tries to reach over Clint to hug her. Clint shoves him off.

“That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting that.”

She munches on the pizza before speaking again.

“I don’t want you just buying me shit. I don’t want the credit cards or the bank accounts. But if you want to pay my tuition and books, that’s okay. I like having Fury owe me one.”

He grins and nods.

“Consider tuition taken care of them. But you’ll keep one back account and one credit card, just incase.”

She goes to argue but frowns as she thinks.

“Okay, but it’s just a lot of money.”

Tony shrugs from his seat, relaxed on the couch.

“It’s more than I need.”

He thinks some more before speaking again.

“You’ll keep a million, for emergencies.”

Darcy makes a choking sound, and Clint thinks she’s inhaled her pizza instead of swallowing it.

“Tony! That’s too much!”

The superhero just grins.

“Think of it as all the Christmas and birthday presents I have to make up for.”

She goes to argue but shakes her head at him once she sees the serious look in his eyes. He won’t take no for an answer on this.

“Fine.”

He grins.

“But I get to send you any gadgets I think you’d like. I do it to Pepper and Rhodey and Happy-”

“And the Avengers,” Clint adds.

“Yeah, and the Avengers anyway. And you get to use the jets and cars when you want-”

Steve wanders in with a very enthusiastic Jane following him.

“And if you don’t take him up on that offer he’ll keep buying them for you.”

Tony turns in his seat to throw a lavish grin at Steve.

“Yeah and you kept one of the motorcycles, didn’t you?”

Tony turns back to Darcy with that same soft, fond smile on his face. She is starting to realize that this smile is only for her. (It’s scary. Scary and kinda nice.)

“What do you say, Darcy?”

She munches on her pizza and tries to ignore Jane’s giddy smile. This just means that she gets all the equipment she wants because she has an in with Tony Stark.

“I’m still not calling you dad.”

Tony’s smile goes all goofy and soft. He tries to hug her. She ends up shoving pizza in his face. Clint laughs and doesn’t help his teammate. Darcy smirks at Tony’s flailing. Good to know where his loyalties lie. Steve just shakes his head and asks Jane to show him how one of her doodads (Darcy’s words not his, he uses the actual name for the thing) work. Darcy narrows his eye at him. He’s trying to get Jane on his good side, so when everything goes to shit and the truth comes out Jane will still like him.

“Star-spangled kiss ass.”

Steve just shrugs. Darcy supposes it is better to have the scientist that can one day send you to different dimensions on your side. Clint just finishes his pizza.

* * *

The next day Coulson beeps in on one of Darcy’s computer screens and offers them full funding on a trip to England and access to a lab at Oxford that Jane had been begging for.

Jane doesn’t look as excited as everyone expects. She crosses her arms and glares at Coulson.

“And this has nothing to do with the fact that somebody hacked into our security and tried to kill us? That you sent Captain America to babysit us?”

Coulson stands his ground. Darcy bites down on her lips to keep from laughing at the tick in his jaw.

“Yeah, I’m kind of ridiculously smart, and sometimes I get stuck in my own research, but I’m still pretty damn observant.”

Now Darcy bites down on a wave of guilt. Clint leans into the screen, which just so happens makes him lean into her, to grin at Coulson.

“Better sweeten the pot, sir.”

“Your lab will be remade to your exact specifications. Stark has agreed to provide whatever technology and equipment you require as well as a state of the art security system. You will have access to any lab in Europe within our means for as long as you like it.”

People don’t seem to get that Jane is wicked sharp and stubborn as all hell. Honestly, the woman is trying to make bridges out of rainbows, they should know better by now. Coulson actually shifts in his seat after a few more seconds of steady eye contact.

“We want to ensure your and Darcy’s safety, Dr. Foster. We don’t want anything like this to happen again.”

His eyes dart over to Darcy quickly before they’re gone. His voice is hard and full of promise.

“I won’t let it.”

Jane smiles suddenly.

“Wonderful, we’ll be ready to go in three days. I expect Erik to meet us there. Oh, and we need first class seats. Bye Phil!”

Steve and Tony stare at Jane much like Coulson just did. It’s a mixture of awe, confusion, and a little bit of terror. Darcy just reaches out at pats a shoulder comfortingly as she pulls out her Stark phone and start rearranging her entire spring schedule on NMSU’s website. Clint just grins at them.

“You wonder why only one person applied to be her intern now?”

Jane just offers them a pleasant grin and a request for help backing up hard drives. Steve jumps into motion. Clint tries to help but quickly gets handed the tape gun by Jane. Which was a mistake because a stapler somehow gets taped to Tony’s hand when no one was paying attention. Darcy shakes her head and goes find a pair a scissors. They keep up the little antics for the two days it takes them to get packed up and squared away. It’s enough to keep the memories away. It’s enough to have her sleep easily through the night. It’s not enough to make her like goodbyes.

She makes her protection detail promise to let her know if there really is a base in Antarctica but not finding by actually getting sent there. They smile and nod like good little soldiers, but they hug both Jane and her tightly. Johnny Bravo, “just John is fine,” tears up. Darcy is nice enough to let it slide. Jane shakes Steve’s hand very professionally. Darcy just gives up the ghost and hugs him. Steve immediately tenses against her.

“I would say sorry for grabbing your ass. But I’m really not. Besides, Jane still doesn’t know, and I said I would if I ever had the chance... Girl’s gotta keep her appearances up.”

He nods, barely containing his laughter while he shakes her hand. Clint sidles up next to Steve with a grin and his arm still in a sling. She returns the smile and hugs him gently. Except he isn’t having it because he wraps his good arm around her and hugs her like he means it. She sinks into it and closes her eyes, sighing into the familiar embrace. She’s going to miss him so much.

“What? I don’t rate an ass grab?”

She laughs and swats him on his rather spectacular ass. He quirks an eyebrow when they pull away from each other.

“Kinky.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Purple spandex.”

His grin goes wry as he waggles his eyebrows.

“Like I said, _kinky_.”

Jane joins in Steve’s disappointed head shaking. Darcy flips them both off. Tony clears his throat gently and then pretends like he didn’t when she turns to glare at him. Instead, she sighs and opens her arms, much like he did the last time they parted ways. He smiles softly but steps forward to accept her hug. He presses another kiss to her forehead.

“See you soon, kiddo.”

He walks out of the lab with Steve and Clint in tow looking like he’s walking the runway. It makes her laugh. Jane bumps her shoulder with her own. She stiffens suddenly. Darcy nearly reaches for her taser.

“Holy crap, we’re 4 for 6 with the Avengers.”

Darcy swallows and forces out a smile.

“Yeah, pretty cool right?”

A year or two in London should be exciting enough for her to forget about Thor, right? Darcy sighs, looks out over the half assembled boxes and dustsheets thrown around, and sighs again. She digs her hands into her back pockets as she scans around the lab, seeing what needs to be taken or packed away. She stills when her fingers brush against paper. She pulls it out to find a note in Clint’s blocky handwriting.

_I’ve always got your six._

There’s a phone number written neatly underneath it. She smiles and tucks it back into her pocket. She starts to bark orders at the two jackbooted thugs Coulson had sent to help with the final pack up. (He said he couldn't afford to keep loaning her Captain America.) She’s got shit to do and minions to do it for her.

* * *

“I’m surprised you didn’t flip your shit that nearly $200 worth of the government’s money was blown on Slurpees.”

Coulson looks up and gives him the blank stare #3, the confused stare. Clint’s had years to memorize the stares and learn what they actually meant. His favorite is angry forehead crinkle stare #6, it means Coulson’s secretly trying not to fart.

“There weren’t any charges for Slurpee’s, or Icees, for that matter. But I am surprised about the amount of sugar Cinnamon Sugar Pop Tarts. Darcy actually left the budget balanced and well under the stipend.”

It’s Clint’s turn to be confused. It isn’t until he looks over the bill that he understands that Coulson isn’t pulling his leg, which he never does, but there is a first time for everything. He can’t believe that Darcy bought them all jumbo Slurpees every Tuesday for two months with her own money. The same money that she always was so careful and frugal and downright stingy with.

He blinks at Coulson. The man just smiles at him.

“For the sharpest man I know, you’re kind of dragging ass on this one.”

Clint fingers the arrowhead in his pocket. And then he starts to plan.

* * *

Except his plan goes to shit when another mad scientist with a hate hard on for Tony tries to take over the United States after blowing up parts of it. Then there are giant portals to other worlds opening up all over the place, and Thor gets let out of the bag. Darcy sends Coulson a voicemail that he’s replayed 16 times before he deleted the data from his tablet.

“Secret Agent Man, this is your heads up. Thor is back, Jane knows everything, and some strange shit is going down in London. A few jackbooted thugs would be nice company, maybe ones that prefers bows and birdcalls? Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still haven’t given me back my iPod!”

Coulson scrambles to send out a unit to their last known location but then portals start opening up all over the US, and it’s all hands on deck. Clint doesn’t hear a thing from Darcy. He isn’t disappointed. She is kind of busy on her end. (He is kind of focusing on the fact that she hasn’t called him instead of the fact that she is in trouble without back up, and he’s thousands of miles away.)

“It’s not like I’m expecting her to pick up the phone and call. I just thought she’d text me or something.”

Natasha ducks while he shoots a Dark Elf in the face in the middle of 3rd street. She vaults over the hood of a car and lands next to him and reloads her gun without pausing.

“She doesn’t even have your number.”

He doesn’t say anything, just shoots. Apparently, the world ending can wait long enough for Natasha to give Clint a withering look.

“National security means nothing to you.”

He snorts.

“Do I have to remind you of Paris ‘09?”

She glares but lets the topic drop. Then she opens her mouth and closes it. She peeks over their cover long enough to shoot down three elves without blinking. Clint glares at her and hits his own targets. She raises an eyebrow. _You won’t like it_. He raises one back. _I’ll decide that_.

“She’s had her hands full being uprooted and moved to Europe, dealing with a depressed Jane, getting her degree and deciding on a graduate program, and then dealing with Jane who knows her best friend lied to her face for years, her relationship with Ian-”

Clint nearly misses his target. Nearly.

“She’s dating the _intern_?”

Natasha corrects him easily.

“ _Her_ intern that she kissed in a moment of adrenaline filled celebration, which she probably would have told you about if you wouldn’t freak out about it.”

He can feel the heat of Natasha’s glare on his face. So what? He’s kept tabs on her. He’s also kept tabs on Jane, Erik, Pepper, and Coulson. He likes to make sure the people he lov- _likes_ , the people he _likes_ are okay.

“I wouldn’t have done anything.”

“Just like how you didn’t do anything to Stuart? The kid didn't leave his house for two weeks.”

Clint ignores mission protocol and actually takes his eye off the battlefield to stare at her incredulously.

“How do you even know about that? How does she-”

Then he stops trying to figure it out because, well, it’s Darcy. He can feel himself grinning. Natasha rolls her eyes, ejects an empty clip, and replaces it.

“I miss her but not as much as you miss each other.”

Words shouldn’t be sharper than his arrows. Natasha smirks at him. But the smirk fades as he goes silent and starts shooting things with rapid-fire accuracy. She sighs from her position next to him.

“Clint, stop being an idiot and notice what’s right in front of you.”

She watches as a Dark Elf goes down in flames.

“So to speak.”

She darts from behind the car, effectively distracting the three elves coming at them so Clint can take them out. He might be willfully ignorant of his own feelings, but he has noticed that Natasha hasn’t worn the necklace he’d given her since she’s met Darcy.

* * *

And because fate has it out for him, he has a string of back to back missions while Natasha is off being Fury’s right hand. He honestly should have known something was up when she encouraged him to go back home for a week or two. And when he says encouraged, he really means ordered him to go home, get some sleep, eat some pizza, catch up on Netflix, and pet a dog. Clint doesn’t even have a dog.

He should have known something was going down. He just thought she was trying to overthrow a 3rd world country’s government again. (He did say he didn’t want to be involved in another Budapest.) But then fucking Hydra went and ruined his plans of _get some sleep, eat some pizza, then pop up at Jane’s London apartment and hassle Darcy into watching Netflix with me and maybe adopting a dog with me,_ that he had loosely started to plan out.

But the time everything is sorted and the world is kind of right side up, he isn’t an agent anymore but a fully-fledged Avenger. It still kind of boggles his mind. He’s sitting in Stark Tower watching the sun set over Manhattan. His brain can’t help but supply that it would be much prettier on a roof in New Mexico with a certain taser happy brunet next to him. He pulls out the arrowhead, worn a little smoother by a year of living in his pocket, and grins. Well-laid plans never really have an expiration date.

“Hey Jarvis, what do you know about birthday parties?”


	17. Chapter 17

Darcy’s life doesn’t magically go back to normal. Not when she survived an invasion of Dark Elves hell bent on wrecking at least nine worlds. Not when she shares living space with a demi-god Avenger. Not when they up and move to Stark Tower when Tony offers Jane an entire lab and unlimited funding after the Greenwich incident. Not when her internship is up, and she has two degrees and no idea what to do with them.

It definitely doesn’t go back to normal when she gets a call from Fury and an offer that she would never have thought she’d accept. (Tony gave Darcy sad eyes over the video feed when she told him that she wouldn’t be working for SI. She flipped him off and reminded him that she didn’t need her own plane especially not one with her name down the side of it in airbrushed flames.). She gets a swaggy apartment in Avengers Tower and close contact with some of her favorite people. The only exception is Clint who’s off on some secret mission or something since she’s got here and everyone is all very hush-hush about it.

So that’s why she doesn’t really question why she’s only seen Bruce and Natasha around the last few days. The Avengers are busy even if Tony is throwing a party in four hours. Disappearing for hours at a time, or months in certain people’s cases, comes with the whole superhero title. She’s pretty much the head of Avengers PR and HR, so she gets a little more inside information but not much. It’s mostly scheduling a few press conferences, the handling of lawsuits, and using the threat of Pepper to keep the Avengers firmly on the Good Guys list for both the public and political. So when she and Jane make it to the penthouse of Stark Tower twenty minutes later because of Jane’s broken shoe (yay for superglue and Google!), she doesn’t really understand why everyone goes quiet as they step through the door. That is until everyone starts yelling.

“Happy Birthday, Darcy!”

She takes in the whole room decked out in birthday regalia and glitter and…

“Is that a piñata?”

Jane counters that with a firm pinch on her hip.

“You know how you thought lying to me for the better part of a year was okay?”

Darcy nods numbly.

“Pretty nice payback.”

She turns to her friend with a frown. She still feels a little guilty over that. Jane just rolls her eyes and hugs her.

“How many times do I have to remind you that you were doing the right thing? It was a matter of international security!”

Darcy just hugs her back tightly, grateful to her best friend. She nudges Jane away and jerks her head at the man making a beeline for them. A bright smile blooms across the thunder God’s face as he takes in Jane, and Darcy takes a second to appreciate Thor with his hair pulled back into a man bun and in a sleek tux, because damn, Jane is a lucky lady. By then the party has fallen to a murmur and Rhodie pulls the attention to the band that stands to play, oddly enough, a J Lo song. Tony points to Jane as he slips out of the crowd. Peeper looks amused, which isn’t good.

“Jane’s your plus one? Where’s Ian?”

“In London, where he lives because were are not and never will be together, which you already know.”

Tony’s eyes glint mischievously. Darcy jabs a finger into his chest, purposely going higher to miss the arc reactor. Tony flinches, just a little bit, but she’s too angry with him to question it.

“You said this was one of your Stark Industries parties!”

He shrugs.

“I sent out the wrong invitation.”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“To the whole room?”

She is proud that her voice doesn’t rise in annoyance. He grins a little and shrugs. He talks around his drink.

“Just you.”

Pepper smacks him upside his head for her. She smiles at Darcy.

“You look lovely, Darcy. The birthday girl should always be the best dressed person at her party.”

Darcy feels her eyes grow wide.

“Et tu Pepper?"

Pepper shrugs and gives her a soft smile. They’re pretty good friends and co-leaders of the _We can’t help it, we love Tony Stark_ fan club.

“Certain parties missed you and wouldn’t take my advice. They had to resort to covert operations and espionage. And once Tony makes up his mind to make trouble, everyone else kind of goes along for the ride…”

She gives Darcy a hug and darts off to go do Pepper things. Darcy is still frowning at Tony when she sees Jane just staring up at Thor with a stupid grin on her face. Thor’s face looks like it’s about to rip in half he’s grinning so hard. It’s difficult to hold on to her righteous indignation when she can see people making moony eyes at each other. God, there are so in love it makes her sick sometimes. Darcy turns to Jane.

“Geeze, would you just kiss him already? Apparently, I have a party to attend even if my birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

Thor gathers her friend into a tight embrace and lays one on Jane that even makes Darcy blush with its intensity. They’ve been ridiculously sappy since he came back. Tony grins at her, all teeth and happy crinkly eyes.

“So you’ll stay?”

She smiles at him, and he reaches forward to hug her. She lets him because she’s kind of more stunned than angry by this point. She can’t stay pissed at Tony Stark, apparently.

“I did good right? I mean I got the piñata and the cake and a live band, but Nat wouldn’t let me get the ponies. So I got a fire eater-”

She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek to keep him from rambling.

“Yeah, yeah Daddy Warbucks you did good. But if you ever pull this shit on me again, so help me god I will pour pudding in your suits – Hey is that an icee bar!?”

He grins at her as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and leads her over to them.

“Yeah, they have Coke, rum and Coke, Cherry Coke, rum and Cherry Coke. There’s a Dr. Pepper one. I had to get Pep’s favorite too. Gotta keep both my girls happy.”

She elbows him but accepts the rum and coke icee a server hands here with a smile. She can’t believe she never thought of a rum and coke icee but yeah, 7Eleven probably didn’t have a great market for it. She gets swept up in the hustle and bustle of the party, her party. Bruce gives her a giant bear hug when he finds her. It’s probably from the panic about being is such a large, loud crowd, and maybe a little something to do with the four glasses of 50 year old whiskey Tony has undoubtedly supplied him with.

“Darcy, you look beautiful.”

“And hot.”

She grins and throws a wink at Sam. She’s glad he came along for the whole Avenger ride with Steve. She knows it helps having Sam to talk to. And Sam is pretty good at ignoring Tony and doing what’s actually best for someone. Like switching Bruce to iced tea. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s decent to look at.

Natasha rolls her eyes, like she can read Darcy’s mind. (Darcy is pretty sure that if anyone could become telepathic by will alone it is Natasha.) With half of the Avengers around her or in her immediate line of sight (Tony is trying to convince Pepper to let him request the Bunny Hop and Rhodey, bless him, is paying off the band to not playing any line dances no matter who requests them), it’s time she asks the question that’s been on her mind for the last month.

“Where the hell is Clint?”

Natasha slings her arm under Darcy’s and pulls her toward the little congregation around Steve.

“He’s around.”

She wants to ask the red head what that means, but she’s more concerned about the pained look on Steve’s face. She hears a question about the war and knows that it still is and will always be a sore subject for him. Darcy interrupts them easily.

“He punched Hitler in the face. What’s more to know?”

They all grin at that. Steve looks at her like she is a gift from god. She smiles at him as she grabs his arm.

“Now if you excuse me, the birthday girl is going to steal him away for a while.”

He follows her over to the bar and grins at her as she motions to the bartender. Steve grins as she accepts the chilled glass the man hands her.

“Darcy, you are a sight for sore eyes.”

He leans over to hug her, and she abandons her drink on the bar to return his hug happily, laughing over his shoulder.

“Awe Steve, you know I wouldn’t let those groupies get you.”

He laughs at her as he takes a step back. He frowns slightly as he realizes something.

“I didn’t get you a birthday present.”

She shrugs but an idea strikes her as a slow song starts to play.

“Let me teach you how to dance.”

He looks weary and a little sad, but she grasps his forearm gently.

“I don’t think she’d be mad at you for fulfilling a birthday wish.”

He ducks his head but nods after a beat, and Darcy leads him out on the dance floor.

“Just follow me.”

It’s a Maroon 5 cover that starts to play of all things, but Darcy ignores it and pulls Steve minutely closer. He doesn’t look uncomfortable just unsure. She grips his shoulder as he looks down at his feet. She’s never seen this side of Steve before. It’s weird to see him nervous. But it only makes her like Steve more. He’s the most human person she knows, not to mention the most decent human being she knows. She squeezes his hand gently and forces his eyes back to hers.

“Don’t look down. You’re doing fine.”

He almost steps on her toes once but recovers smoothly. She laughs with him at the falter and grins at him as they move in slow circles. She stops guiding him backwards when he starts to lead her little by little.

“See! You’re a natural, Steve.”

He beams at her and turns her out to her surprise. He catches her smoothly, and they keep dancing without missing a beat.

“I always wanted to do that to a dame.”

She laughs at him.

“Steve Rogers, don’t you start getting fresh with me.”

He laughs, strong and loud. It’s good to hear that laugh. It’s good to pull that laugh out of him. It’s more than enough of a birthday present for Darcy. His laughter falls into chuckles, and it really shouldn’t be completely adorable, but it is. She raises an eyebrow as she leans back to look at him him.

“What?”

His grin grows as he turns them and ducks closer to speak to her.

“I think we broke Tony.”

She cranes her neck to see Tony Stark mouth open, jaw slack. Pepper is laughing behind her hand. Sam is snapping pictures with his phone like a madman. Bruce is grinning like a fool. They both watch as Tony takes out a $100 bill and hands it to the elated scientist. Steve just laughs and hugs her as the song ends. She whispers to him before they part.

“Best. Present. Ever.”

Steve laughs and kisses her on the cheek before Tony is there, pouting and tucking her hand over his arm as he swiftly moves them away from a proud looking Steve.

“Seriously? You’ll dance with Capsicle, but not with your old man?”

Darcy snorts.

“You’re old, but not my man.”

Tony grabs his chest in mock outrage and immediately flinches. Darcy pulls to a stop to ask him if he’s okay. She knows that he went in for some kind of procedure a week or two ago. She can access any and all things where the Avengers are concerned. (About a week into her new gig, she had to run an OP to bag Thor and send him to the dentist. He took out three agents before Jane got wind of it. In the end the Demi-God got a molar recapped, had a chip filled, and slept on the sofa for a week.) She’s about to ask Tony what’s wrong when he smiles and presents her to a group of people.

“Darcy, there are some people I’d like you to meet.”

She turns away from Tony and comes face to face with four people that definitely don’t need introductions.

“Darcy Lewis, this is the Fantastic Four. Dr. Reed Richards, his wife Sue Storm, her brother Johnny Storm, and Dr. Ben Grimm. Fantastic Four, this is the birthday girl.”

She smiles at them because she is kind of star struck. She’s friends with the Avengers. She shouldn’t be star struck. But then Mister Fantastic is complementing her on her research and how well she handles the public and political side of the Avengers. The Thing - _Ben,_ he tells her to call him Ben! - gives her the number to the Fantastic Four’s communication system in the hovercraft because Thor said she’s the one they need to call if Tony acts like an ass and Pepper’s busy. She’s kind of off her guard when Johnny Storm starts hitting on her as the rest of his team moves away to talk to Tony about something called a Silver Surfer. Johnny Storm, who looks so much like Steve that she has to do a double take to make sure Steve is still talking to Rhodey by the bar.

“That dress is stunning on you. You are quite the radiant birthday girl.”

She catches him looking at her boobs, and she ignores the urge to say something snarky. She can’t make a bad impression because it might inadvertently affect the Avengers. She’s heard about the playboy and his pettiness. When her friends are out there fighting for their lives, they need all the help they can get. Besides, she’s dealt with worse. She takes a breath and smiles at him.

“I think I’m taking the surprise party well seeing as I only know about ten people here.”

He laughs, “Well who said you can’t make friends at a party. I’d like to be your friend, birthday girl.”

Darcy knows that he can’t remember her name, so he sticks with what he does know. She feels her jaw tick as he grins at her and slides closer in the pretense of giving a waiter more room to walk around the other party goers. She feels the douchebag alarm go off in her head. She’s seen and been with too many of the Johnny Storm types. She can pinpoint a player a mile away. They fact that she has national news coverage proving this doesn’t really help his case. She wants to taser him except Jane made her leave her taser in her room downstairs. She’s about to reach for one of the drinks on a passing waiter’s tray when she feels a hand on the small of her back.

“Darcy, you look beautiful.”

She turns to see Clint smiling at her. She feels the knot in her shoulders ease at the sight of him. She takes him in with a slow once over. He’s wearing a light grey tux with a black shirt and tie. He looks amazing, but his hair is the same old carefree mess that she can’t help but love. She tries to control the huge grin on her face, but she can’t help it.

“It’s not purple spandex, but you don’t look too bad yourself, Barton.”

The silly, too wide grin that spreads on his face makes her laugh. Johnny looks a little confused at their inside joke, but Darcy doesn’t care. She just wants to get away from him. Which Clint seems to understand as he raises one lone eyebrow in both question and answer. God, she’s missed him.

“Sorry, but we have some catching up to do.”

He places his hand at the small of her back and leads her away. She forgets that she had even been close to dosing the Human torch in alcohol, probably a bad idea anyway, as Clint leads her over to chairs near the floor to ceiling glass windows overlooking the city. Before they sit she pulls him into a hasty hug. She bumps against him and she hears the oof he makes at the rough hug, but he hugs her in return laughing gently. She grins up at him before she lets him go.

“So how’d you know I needed to be rescued?”

He shakes his head but gives her a sheepish grin.

“I saw you itching for your taser.”

She scrunches her nose. He’d let her bring her taser to a party. Jane can be a killjoy sometimes.

“That guy is a dick.”

“Oh, you don’t even know.”

She laughs at him as he turns to look out of the window, ignoring the party and music around them.

“So did you just get here?”

He looks back at her with a sheepish grin.

“I’ve been here the whole time.”

She places a hand on her chest and pretends to be hurt. It’s not that hard because she kind of is. She hadn’t seen him in person for nearly a year, not since he’d taken two bullets for her. She’s missed him. She thought they were friends. And it was her freaking birthday! But she pushes that thought away because he’s here now. And she doesn’t want to think about why he’s at the top of her People I Miss list.

“I’m crushed, Agent Barton.”

He gives her a cool smile.

“I had business to take care of.”

She rolls her eyes but let him keep his vague answer, for now. She lets the conversation drop off and they settle into their old comfortable silence. Darcy takes a flute of champagne from a passing waiter. She doesn’t like the stuff but it’s expensive, and Tony’s paying for it. She takes a sip when Clint speaks.

“You really do look beautiful.”

(He’s lying. She doesn’t look beautiful. She looks gorgeous. She's wearing a simple little black dress, but it hugs all her curves perfectly. But he can’t tell what makes it sexier, the short skirt that shows of her legs (she might be on the petite side but the girl has got legs for days), the four inch cheetah print heels that flash red as blood when she walks, or the fact that she wears the scar on her arm without shame. He’s spent the first half hour of the party trying to figure it out and failing.

He spent the other half making sure everything went smoothly. That meant keeping Tony away from the bar, Thor away from Mjolnir, kicking the fire breather out for almost setting Happy on fire, and Johnny Storm away from her. He really wishes he could punch him or at least watch Darcy taser him.)

“Flattery will get you everywhere except back in my good graces.”

He pouts. Darcy can’t help but let her lips twitch up into a grin. She settles her drink on the low table at the side of her chair. She pulls herself to her full height in her chair, mimicking the pose Pepper uses when she wants to instill fear into stockholders, and pushes her shoulders back. The dress is modestly cut, but her décolleté is anything but. She gives Clint kudos for not dropping his gaze.

“It is my birthday, and, last time I checked, the birthday girl always gets what she wants.”

He smirks at her.

“Oh really?”

She nods and crosses one leg over the other. At that, his eyes drop to trace one leg from knee to toe. She lifts an eyebrow and stores that away for later. Clint sits a little straighter. His eyes go soft. He opens his mouth.

“Darcy, I-“

They are interrupted by a very familiar voice cutting across the music.

“Now’s the time we’ve all been waiting for! The cake! But first we need the Birthday Girl. Darcy! Where’s Darcy?”

Darcy stills in her seat and barely, just barely, resists the urge to bury her face in her hands. Clint’s eyebrows twitch.

“Oh crap, who let him have a mic?”

Clint snorts but helps her to her feet. He lifts a hand in the air to get Tony’s attention. Tony narrows his eyes at them as they move through the parting crowd.

“Hawkass, stop monopolizing the Birthday Girl.”

They both flip him off which only makes him grin. She walks to the clearing in the middle of the room where Steve and Sam are rolling out a giant frosty monstrosity of a cake that looks exactly like an giant iPod. The album cover is the Artic Monkeys. Darcy is so shocked she can’t speak. Tony rushes toward the table.

“Do you like it?”

When she doesn’t answer, he turns to Pepper.

“She doesn’t like it.”

He points at Clint.

“She doesn’t like it! I told you to get the Ninja Turtle one!”

She catches his arm and pulls him into a hug.

“Tony, it’s perfect.”

He pulls back to see her face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She looks around at them, her friends, and smiles. Her eyes are watery.

“This whole night has been wonderful. Thank you, all of you.”

Clint appears at her side and points out the little sugar sticker cake decorations of the Avengers stuck to the side.

“I had to go to 15 stores to find The Hulk.”

She grabs his hand and squeezes. He pulls her into his side and hugs her. She blinks away the tears that she can feel in the corner of her eyes.

“Seriously, _thank you_.”

Clint shrugs, but she grips his hand tighter and accepts the knife Natasha hands her. She notices almost detachedly that she isn’t wearing her arrow necklace. She hasn’t worn it since Darcy moved into the tower. But then Tony is urging her to cut the cake and before she knows it he’s signaling the band and grinning at her.

“Ladies choice.”

She stands in the middle of her friends and smiles. She has her choices cut out for her. She’s never much cared for gender roles. She’d easily pick Jane or Natasha over Thor or Sam. There’s Clint. There’s always Clint, but…

It doesn’t really take much thought about who her dance goes to. She holds a hand out to Tony. He beams as he takes her hand and starts to lead her out onto the dace floor. She laughs and clutches onto his arm as the fast song turns into something slower.

“Is this? It this a HAIM cover?”

Tony chuckles.

“I’m totally down with what you young people listen to today.”

She shakes her head but smiles as she rests one hand on his shoulder. His smile softens as he studies her smiling face.

“You happy?”

She looks past him, to her friends watching them dance, smiling and laughing. She looks back to him and smiles. She rests her cheek on his shoulder as they sway.

“Yeah, I’m happy.”

She feels his lips against her hair and the faraway sound of a picture being taken. She grins. Even JARVIS is in attendance, sort of.

“I’m still not calling you dad though.”

He snorts as she pulls herself back up.

“I wouldn’t presume.”

He winks at her before he turns and suddenly Clint is the one holding her hand, a wide, warm hand at her back, and a grin on his face. Pepper is swept smoothly away with Tony. She shares an impressed look with Darcy over Tony’s shoulder. They had managed to change partners without missing a beat. Darcy whistles under her breath.

“I have to say, that was smooth even for you.”

Clint beams.

“Thank you. We practiced all week.”

She hums and tugs gently at his lapel with her fingers.

“Funny how I haven’t bumped into you then. Or seen you the entire time I’ve been here.”

He turns them in slow circles, his body not giving anything away except for how his hand presses more firmly against the small of her back.

“I swear that I’ve only been back for a week. Ask Tasha.”

Darcy narrows her eyes at him, but there’s nothing in her gut telling her that he’s lying. Clint’s always been honest with her, even when he hasn’t wanted to.

“Then why the hell haven’t you come and seen me? Welcome me to the tower?”

When she realizes how hurt and needy she sounds, she hastily plasters on a grin.

“Or buy me monogrammed towels with little lighting bolts on them?”

He laughs softly.

“I figured Thor had the welcome wagon covered. He practically destroyed the common room when he heard you guys were moving in.”

As they move, he pulls her minutely closer and lowers his voice.

“I was halfway over the Artic Circle when I got word you guys touched down, and when I got back I was kind of preoccupied. Do you know how hard it is to find a good cover band that will play a very specific playlist pilfered from an iPod that I had to steal from the leader of a highly classified and well hidden organization?”

She blinks at him. He jerks his head to a table overflowing with gifts. He gives her a slow grin as her eyes lands back on him.

“Phil says happy birthday. Fury also sends his best and a bottle of scotch.”

There’s commotion around them. It sounds like counting. Darcy ignores them. If it weren’t for Clint, she’d probably have stopped moving right about now. Realization dawns on her.

“Clint, you did all of this?”

He smiles and shrugs a little.

“Everyone deserves at least one really good birthday.”

He leans forward. The counting gets louder or maybe quieter. It’s hard to tell with a thumb brushing across her cheek and Clint pressed against her. She closes her eyes as his lips graze softly across her own, soft and sweet. When he pulls back his eyes are dark, and his voice is low.

“Happy birthday, Darcy.”

She smiles at him, wishing her brain would have caught up faster, so she could have kissed him back. Then Jane is there and shouting happy birthday, and Thor is kissing her cheek, and Natasha is handing her a shot of vodka so cold and strong it makes her eyes water. Sam is pulling her into his arms and into a dance to nothing other than a Marvin Gaye cover. Steve is laughing as he gets pulled in my Maria Hill and Pepper.

Clint doesn’t go ghost on her again though. He’s always there, just on the outside, and clearly making sure nothing goes wrong. She’s caught him giving Johnny Storm death glares every time he looks like he’s about to join in on the Avenger’s little dance party. (It helps that Rhodey, who is talking military contracts with Dr. Richards, just give him a headshake and a stern, “I really wouldn’t, son.”) Clint is also making sure to intercept Tony every time he tries to ply Bruce with more liquor. Mostly by using Pepper in a skintight blue dress as a distraction.

It seems to work for an hour or two. Then she loses site of Tony as Jane, Natasha, Sam, and her get down to an N*SYNC song. Seriously, this cover band is amazing. Tony reappears with another mic in hand. He’s managed to wrap a giant red bow around himself. Darcy immediately tenses and starts to move steadily toward the elevator doors.

“Don’t want to stick around for your presents?”

She pins Clint with an unamused look, but doesn’t stop walking. He falls in step with her easily.

“He sent me a jewel encrusted toothbrush for Christmas. It cost more than my entire grad school tuition.”

Clint holds open the elevator door for her.

“Yeah, you can open them tomorrow.”

She smiles and walks in. She isn’t expecting him to follow her in and hit the close door button before anyone notices them leaving. It’s a surprise. He seems to be chalk full of them tonight. She leans against the cool metal wall and uses it to brace herself. She pulls off her shoes and clutches them in one hand. She sighs in relief as her feet hit cool tile.

“What’s up with you and bare feet?”

She grins at the laughter in his voice.

“You try teetering around on these things for a few hours and see how much your feet hate you.”

His eyes are dark and his voice is low, like when they were dancing.

“I didn’t mind watching you teeter around in those things all night.”

She blushes, she can feel it, and she immediately blames the alcohol in her system.

“And you didn’t even get me a present first.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her.

“Who said I didn’t get you a present?”

He pulls out a little rectangular box and hands it to her. She watches him carefully as he waits for her to open it. She pulls her arrowhead bracelet out of the box. The back and edges are silver plated, and it’s actually secured to the black leather cord by metal fastenings. It looks like a piece of jewelry now and not just a craft project gone wrong.

She looks up at him. She can’t help the shocked look on her face because she’d never thought she’s get it back. She’d be too worried about him and the destroyed lab and Jane. Somewhere in the back of her head she knows someone took this out of a dead guys body and that it was covered in blood, but it’s the thought that counts.

“I figured you might want it back.”

She nods quietly still trying to stop the tears pricking at her eyes. She doesn’t even know why she wants to cry. Instead she holds her hand out to him and lets him claps it in place.

“You know this is a re-gifted present. You’re gonna have to do better than that, Barton. It's my birthday.”  
  
She’s smirking up at him as he slides in front of her. But her smile falls as he leans into her now, body warm against hers, hands open and pressing firmly into her back. She can smell him, the clean smell of barely scented soap and the cool soft mint of his shaving cream. She takes a breath to slow the rapid beating of her heart.

He uses one hand to lift her face up. His thumb and forefinger gently holds her chin in place. His eyes are that same dark blue-hazel, like stormy waters and thunderclouds, the same colors of a forest after cleansing rain.

“Happy birthday, Darcy.”

It’s just a whisper on her lips, a ghost of words, before he leans forward and kisses her. His lips are warm and firm. It isn’t the most passionate kiss, but it isn’t hurried or sloppy or boring. He kisses her deliberately, determinedly, with intention. She folds into him with a sigh as he pulls away.

She stares at her hands on his chest. She can’t believe she didn’t notice this. He was the one that made sure she was okay after the explosion. He’s the one that tucked her in bed, multiple times. He’s the one that blew a gasket when she sprained her ankle. He’s also the one that took care of her then. He took two bullets for her.

He kept her from falling apart again when she thought Steve was dead. He threw her a god damn birthday party with every single thing she wanted a party to be and quite a few she didn’t know she wanted. He danced with her and kissed her at midnight on her birthday. He gave her the best birthday she’s ever had. He turned the worst day of her life into the best day of her life. How could she not realize?  
  
“You’re in love with me.”

“Took you this long to get it?”

He smirks at her, but his eyes tell her something else. He looks unsure and almost… frightened. She can’t help but to grin up at him.

“You damn Avengers and your grand fucking gestures.”  
  
She grabs him by his tie and pulls him into another kiss. This one starts off rough. His lips crash against hers at first but she fixes that by slipping her tongue into his mouth, using his surprise to her advantage. The kiss goes from startled to downright sinful in seconds once Clint’s on board. He holds her tightly when he breaks away. She grins up at him.  
  
“I wanted to jump you the day you sang to me on the roof. I think I fell in love with you way before that though.”  
  
He finds the barely visible scar at her temple and brushes his lips against it.  
  
“I was a goner the second you tased me, honestly.”  
  
She grins at that as he leans in for another kiss. This time she can feel the surge of heat behind it. He's even more determined and demanding now. He gets his fingers tangled in her hair. The lapels of his jacket will probably be ruined after this, so she pulls him with her out the opened elevator doors and toward her door because it’s closer than his down the hall. Ninja that he is already has a palm roughly grabbing her ass. It’s distracting. That’s the only reason she backs them into the wall near her door.

He crowds her against it, hands anchored to her ass as he works her neck with his mouth. She can't help the moan that falls past her lips at the feel of teeth and tongue against her skin. Come morning there will be a mark there. Her head swims at the thought that anyone can see what he did to her. Clint uses the distraction to his advantage to haul her up.

She wraps her legs around his waist and grins as she feels him hard against her as he gets the door open. She tries to derail him with her tongue. He's halfway across the room when she ghosts her lips across a spot just below his ear, just under his jaw. She feels him falter, his breath hitching. She sucks hard at the spot and he moans, hands gripping her hard through the dress.

He stumbles into the room and sets her down on the little island in her kitchen. The marble is cold against her hearted skin. She hisses at the sensation, and he uses it to take advantage of her mouth. Then it’s nothing but hands tugging clothes loose, lips and teeth and kisses, and laughter as Clint bangs his knee into the island trying to get his shoes off.

Then they both giggle when Darcy realizes that her shoes are still in the elevator. Clint offers to go get them for her, but it’s half hearted as he slips his hand inside the back of her dress to tug the zipper down even more. His hands feel wonderful against her skin. They’re well on their way to second base when they get interrupted.

“I apologize for the interruption, but Master Stark wishes to speak with y-”

Darcy can feel Clint go still under her hands. His breath fans over the skin of a bare shoulder in short bursts.

“JARVIS, lock him, lock _everyone_ out. Override protocol 002V5. Darcy Stark.”

After what feels like an eternity but is actually a second or two, the AI pings gently.

“Protocol accepted. Override enabled. Good evening, Miss Star-”

She glares up at the ceiling over Clint’s shoulder.

“JARVIS, please don’t ever call me Miss Stark again. _Ever_.”

He speaks again in a chided voice, like he almost didn’t want to call her that in the first place.

“Of course, Miss Lewis.”

Clint sags into her. Darcy runs her fingers across the base of his neck.

“Wow, why to kill the mood.”

Clint presses a kiss to her collarbone before lifting his head up to look into her eyes.

“One day, I’m going to go down on you in front of a mirror just do you can seey how much it’s gonna take to ruin the mood with you around.”

She never really realizes how low her voice gets when she’s turned on. The way Clint’s eyes get darker means that it’s a good thing.

“What are you waiting for?”

He shakes his head, leans in for a kiss that has her wrapping her legs around him and pulling him as close to her as he can get. He rests his forehead against hers as they pant together.

“I want you in a bed first.”

She jerks a thumb over her shoulder and quirks an eyebrow.

“I repeat, what they hell are you waiting for?”

He picks her up off the island and walks them back to her bedroom. She manages to get his dress shirt hanging off his arms and his belt and zipper undone before he lays her down on the bed. He shucks off his clothes as she slips out of her dress. It gets caught on her hips a little so she shimmies it free. She tosses it toward the door before looking back at Clint who has one hand on his boxer briefs and the other hanging mid air. He looks the definition of gobsmacked.

“I'm gonna need a moment here, Darce.”  
  
She props herself up on her elbows to smirk at him, but she's taken back by his eyes. Hungry eyes roam over her slowly, drinking in the black lace against alabaster skin, the curves of her body laid out before him. She grins, happy that she decided to put on her very best lingerie, and pulls herself up to her knees. She shuffles over to him and kisses him and his dazed smile. She knows this will probably be the memory he’ll pull up when he's lonely on assignment. She shouldn't be as turned on about that as she is.

“You know, my phone has a pretty decent camera.”

He grins and tackles her to the bed. Going from sniper still to swift action in a heartbeat. It sends a swift thrill through her.

“We can revisit that, later.”

She laughs but kisses at his jaw. There’s going to be a lot of laters if she has any say in the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone, all together now...
> 
> "FINALLY!"


	18. Chapter 18

Clint meets pretty much every expectation she had of him. He’s patient and gentle and has an amazing amount of stamina. He’s also put his skills as the world’s greatest marksmen to the test and passed with flying colors… three times. His calloused and work roughened fingers make her skin feel like it’s on fire in the best ways when he traces patterns across her skin. But the way he laughs makes her body light up on the inside. The way he looks at her makes her feel cherished and invincible.

She very much likes the way he looks against her pillows with his hair tousled and a bit of lipstick on his cheek. She knows that they have a lot to talk about and work though. For now though, it’s her birthday, she’s spent the night having mind-blowing sex with the guy she’s been in love with for the better part of two years, and there’s a knock at her apartment door. It is two fast knows and one slow; Natasha.

She knows Clint’s awake, but he’s still pretending to be asleep. She rolls her eyes and slips out of bed. She grabs the first items of clothing she can and throws them on. She purposefully snags his button down and slips it on over her underwear. It’s long enough to be considered modest in the tower where Thor likes to wander around in the buff.

She opens her door to find a bundle of clothes, all Clint’s, her shoes, and a note. She walks back to her bedroom wile opening it with one hand.

“Pepper had to go back to work, Rhodey got called out for a bit, and Jane and Thor have gone to Asgard to “retrieve” my present. Should I be worried?”

She looks up to Clint sitting up in bed with a grin plastered on his face. His eyes roam up and down her body slowly.

“I seriously didn’t hear anything you just said, and I totally have my hearing aids in.”

Darcy throws his clothes at him. She’s secretly pleased that she’s so distracting to him that it smacks him in the face.

“Come on, I want greasy bacon and coffee.”

Clint looks like he’s about to fight her on it. She would definitely love to crawl right back into bed with him and start round four, but she didn’t actually eat much of anything last night. She reaches out and tugs on the borrowed collar.

“You can try and talk me out of your shirt. You’ve got until the elevator hits the penthouse floor.”

Clint’s out of bed with his head and one arm in a t-shirt before she can even finish getting the sentence out. She runs to the elevator before he gets out of bed.

* * *

When they do get to the penthouse, it’s been completely cleaned and the furniture’s been put back where it belongs. Tony is handing around a plate of muffins. Natasha looks perfectly put together next to Bruce whose glasses are crooked, and his hair is completely flattened on one side. Sam is trying and failing to steal bacon off of Natasha’s plate (because he is insane, it’s why he fits in so well with the Avengers). Steve gives them both a sharp once over and a smirk.

“ _Good_ morning, Darcy.”

She grins at him and gives him a wink. She loves that Steve’s come out of his shell and is back to his snarky, pre-war self. Sam whistles as Clint holds out a chair for her at the bar table.  
  
“Whoa, that’s a hell of a love bite, Darcy.”

Darcy doesn't even blush, just grins into her coffee while Clint gives Tony a cocky grin as he sits, and there is no way to define it as anything other than _smugly_ , in the chair next to her. Tony sputters into his espresso. Darcy levels a glare at him.  
  
“I swear to god, if you pull that whole “ _What are your intentions with my daughter?”_ bullshit I will leave you drooling in the carpet while I catch up on _Bob’s Burgers_.”  
  
Tony looks unamused, but there is affection in his eyes too. Darcy let's her glare soften and gives him a small smile that she hides behind her bacon. Natasha breaks the happy silence.  
  
“Are you sure that she isn't Coulson's daughter?”  
  
Tony rushes to cover her ears.

“She is too young to hear such slanderous filth!”

Clint fends Tony off for her with a muffin. It’s thrown with sharp precision even as he’s glaring at Natasha.  
  
“Not funny.”

Darcy is laughing at their antics and Natasha is grinning at her, and Steve is smiling and using the opportunity to steal some of Bruce’s crepe. Sam just looks pleased to act as witness to the whole thing. Darcy throws him a wink and helps herself to a croissant. Tony eventually settles back into his chair, but not for long. His head pops up and he grins at Darcy over the table. She narrows her eyes at his satisfied grin.

“I had Dummy and U bring all your presents to your room. I took the liberty to set fire to the gift Johnny Storm gave you,” he motions to Clint, “you’re welcome.”

Darcy rolls her eyes, and rips apart her pastry.

“I am more than capable of opening my own presents.”

Tony shrugs.

“I do it to everyone’s presents.”

The second he says it, he realizes what a mistake it was. All eyes narrow on him. Natasha’s eyebrows _twitch_. Rhodey choose to walk in at the moment. He freezes in place, sensing the aura of doom or something, before shrugging continuing to the empty seat. It’s not the first time he’s interrupted someone trying to kill Tony. Darcy feels like she should help him out. He did help throw her an amazing party and sort, in a round about way, helped her finally lock Clint down. She really should help…

Darcy leans heavily into Clint’s side. He takes her weight easily, munching on his toast like half the room isn’t planning on how to take his teammate’s head off.

“I’m telling Pepper.”

Tony’s face goes pale at that. Good to know that he’s afraid of his fiancé (even if she is off putting the fear of God into some lawyer right now). Darcy smiles behind the coffee mug Clint hands her. The rest of the team cracks up laughing at Tony’s fearful face and floundering words. She sighs deeply as she rests her cup on her knee, and he can finally see her smile.

“That is not funny young lady!”

She shrugs.

“Kinda is, old man.”

His smile goes all soft and goofy. Darcy can feel her face doing the same, damn him.

“Hey, happy birthday.”

She catches the some blue velvet box before it hits Clint in the face. He was kind of distracted by her hand on his thigh. Natasha is so going to give him shit for it later. She plucks the deep red bow off and sticks it firmly to Clint’s head. He beam,s and she can’t help but to kiss him. Tony clears his throat. Darcy rolls her eyes but opens the present. She nearly gasps. It’s a set of diamond drop earrings. But it’s not the quality of the diamonds, they are flawless, but it’s the metal that is dotted among them.

“Tony.”

He had scheduled time off. She didn’t look into it, because even superheroes need a day off. But then at the party, when he poked him he flinched, and when they were dancing… she didn’t notice. The arc reactor hums, softly, and only if you listen to it, and she rested her head against his chest.

She gets up so fast she nearly tips her chair over, but Clint stops it. She slaps at Tony’s attempt to ward her off and tugs down his shirt with one hand. Her other is gripped tightly around the velvet box. This time, when she sees the healing scars and his still slightly sunken chest, she does gasp.

“ _Tony_.”

He looks as panicked and overwhelmed as she feels.

“I kinda should of listened to Pepper on this one, huh? Let you know sooner?”

She smacks him with the box.

“You think!? I should have been there, you moron!”

He smiles and pushes her hair out of her face.

“You were there, kiddo. In here.”

He taps at his still healing chest, where the arc reactor should be, right in front of his heart. Darcy sniffles and look sat the stupid earrings again to give herself time to get herself under control. Sam groans.

“Dude, that came out of his body.”

Darcy lifts her wrist to show off the arrowhead bracelet Clint has secured there last night.

“Clint pulled this out of some assassin’s hand after I stabbed him with it to distract him while I was being held hostage.”

Sam slowly looks around the room. Steve is still eating his breakfast, Bruce is calmly fixing his tea, Natasha is proudly beaming at her. Clint looks like he’s two seconds from displaying actual heart eyes.

“You people are insane.”

Steve snorts. Natasha frowns.

“I think it’s sweet.”

Sam whips around to stare at the red head. His face is a mask of confused fear. Darcy sniggers.

“Hey, you’re sleeping with her.”

Scrambled eggs go flying from Steve’s mouth. Clint is snapping pictures with his phone for posterity… and to show Thor, probably. Natasha is smiling smugly as Sam goes completely still. Darcy can almost see him battling internally with his fight or flight instincts. He literally lives with spies, superheros, and an all knowing AI. Sam should have known his relationship with Natasha wouldn't stay secret for long. Tony gently pulls Darcy’s attention back to her.

“Sooo, do you like them? I was going to go for a matching necklace with Pepper’s, but it seemed a little… gauche.”

She runs her fingers down one earring. The shrapnel has been shaved and molded down to look like jewelry but it’s till pitted and ragged. The diamonds secured throughout and around the metal make it look beautiful instead of deadly. The same little pieces of steel had been killing Tony for years. They were digging their way into his heart, but Darcy beat them to it. She’s thankful she got the chance because Tony’s managed to worm his way into hers.

He’s smiling that smile at her again. It’s the soft, fond one that’s only for her. Darcy refuses to cry on her birthday again. She’s done enough of that to last her a lifetime. She nods sharply and takes a deep breath. She hugs Tony, hard. Then she turns around with teary eyes and waves a stern finger around the room.

“Nobody else better give me any kind of jewelry today.”

Tony goes stiff behind her.

“ _What_?”

Tony leans around Darcy to narrow his eyes at Clint. Darcy steps on his foot.

“Slow your roll, Tony.”

She waves her wrist at his face. His eyes lock onto the bracelet, and he smiles smugly. He aims that grin directly at Clint.

“Went to that jeweler I recommended after all, huh?”

Darcy punches him in the shoulder and snags the rest of her croissant from the table. She offers the people around the table a wide smile.

“If you excuse me, I’ve got a present to unwrap.”

She sends Clint a wink as she leaves the room.

He watches her go with a grin on his face. He’s completely focused on how the back of her thighs look covered by the end of his dress shirt. He’s very much enjoying the view when Natasha’s foot connects with his shin. He immediately grabs it, trying to hold the stinging back.

“What the hell, Tasha?!”

She just stares at him pointedly for a heartbeat before she rolls her eyes. Sam reaches over and flicks the bow on his head. Clint squawks and feels it out. He adjusts it to sit where Darcy stuck it and-

“I’m a present.”

Natasha nods slowly and pats his hand. Steve puts his coffee down slowly and deadpans.

“The prettiest present.”

Steve is hanging out with Natasha and Sam way too much. But Clint can’t even be bothered with the sass. Darcy’s waiting on him. He nearly knocks his chair back to follow her. He manages to slip into the elevator before it closes. She’s fighting back a laugh. She’s probably the prettiest thing he’s ever seen in that moment. He points to the bow sitting haphazardly in his hair.

“I’m a present.”

He laughs, but goes up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. He very much appreciates how it puts all of Darcy right up against him.

“Yes, you are.”

And well, if they stay in the elevator for 20 minutes making out like teenagers, that’s between them and JARVIS.

* * *

It's nearly four in the afternoon by the time she does get to actually unwrapping her presents. The first bag she reaches for has Clint’s chicken scratch on it. He’s managed to forge a perfect copy of Coulson and Fury’s signatures. She smiles. She’d expect nothing less from him.

She happily tears the tissue paper away to get her hands on the slim silver device. Except the second she has it in her hand, her smiles falls. It’s been a while since she’s seen it, years actually, but she’s pretty sure the lack of Batman sticker on the back means it isn’t actually her iPod. When she turns it on none of the music is hers, especially not the playlist that pops up.

“Clint?”

He comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his waste and water dripping from his hair. Darcy pats herself on the back from not swallowing her tongue. She’s known it he had a killer body. She had gotten to know it all last night and most of this morning. Clint is ripped, and the view he’s giving her would completely distract a lesser woman. Her voice is still a little horse when she speaks. Clint looks smug about it.

“This isn’t my iPod.”

That smug look disappears quickly as he walks over to her. She holds out the screen for him to look at the list of songs.

“Unless you really made a playlist called the “Love Making Mix.” I mean, every girl wants to bone to Bump and Grind.”

Clint‘s face is doing some pretty hilarious things. Laughter, shock, disbelief, before finally settling on disgust.

“I thought he’d have better taste in music.”

He plucks the thing form her hand between too fingers and drops it back into the bag. She laughs at him.

“He probably left that as a decoy for you, you know that right?”

Clint’s brow furrows before he frowns.

“Damn it.”

Suddenly, soft red lights pulse three times and a alarm rings. JARVIS’s voice pours from the hidden speakers.

“I am afraid that there has been an incident that requires The Avengers assistance uptown, immediately.”

Clint’s out the door before JARVIS is finished. He comes bolting back in looking horrified. Darcy snorts.

“Sorry, Darce. I’m not used to having someone to say goodbye to.”

He kisses her cheek but she grabs his face.

“It is something you can get used to though, right?”

He grins and kisses her properly.

“Definitely.”

She swats him on the ass, much to his amusement.

“Go kick some ass.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Darcy watches minutes later as Tony’s Quinjet lifts off just as the gleaming red of his suit catches the evening light as he streaks past her window. She’d never thought she would be here, living in Stark Tower, basically running The Avengers after having helped save the Earth at least twice with two college degrees under her belt and the president on speed dial. Her friends, her family, are a bunch of nutjobs with very special skills that defeat evil on a daily basis. A billionaire, ex-playboy, philanthropist and an Asgardian God have adopted her as a daughter and sister, respectively. She fell in love with the biggest goofball on the planet that just so happens to be the world’s greatest marksman.

This is her life now.

It is nothing close to what she wanted, but she so happy it’s what she got.

She digs out her phone and dials a number she knows she shouldn’t have. The shocked voice that answer makes her grin wider.

“Secret Agent Man, where the hell is my iPod?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end... for now!
> 
> I will be posting two epilouge-ish chapters eventually.
> 
> Thank you for enjoying this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it!


	19. Chapter 19

A day later, Thor hands her a freaking sword. It has a bright pink bow on it that changes colors every few seconds. It actually looks like light after it’s fractured through a crystal, and it’s warm to the touch. She happily places it on Thor’s head. He beams. She carefully turns the sword in her hand. It is much lighter than she expected. The handle seems to fit the grip of her hand perfectly. The blade itself is carefully detailed with engraved runes.

“My original gift to you was a just born Cerberus pup, but Jane talked be out of it, and Heimdall was happy to forge this for me instead. The design is meant for protection.”

She walks over to the window to smile up at the sky and hopes that Heimdall is watching. She mouths thank you anyway. She turns the sword in her hands again before something Thor said catches up to her.

“Uh, Thor?”

He turns to her with a wide grin. The bow has now been placed at a jaunty angle by Jane. She can’t help but return his happy smile.

“Yes, Lady Darcy?”

“You really tried to give me a three headed dog?”

His smile falls.

“Yes, but my Jane convinced me that it would be unfair for him to live in an apartment, even one as spacious as those in Avenger’s Tower. Dogs of his size need exercise and sport! Sadly, Midgard does not have Gruffienheim for them to hunt as they would naturally do. ”

She rests the flat of her sword on her shoulder. She doesn’t even want to think of what kind of vermin a Gruffienheim is especially if she starts thinking about a fully-grown three headed dog. She just nods.

“Yeah, good call.”

She shoots Jane a thumbs up for her quick thinking. Jane playfully bows behind Thor’s back just as Clint walks in. He stops, takes one look at Darcy standing there with a sword, and freezes. Tony follows him in. He merely blinks and keeps right on to the couch. Tony Stark has seen stranger things in his life, let alone his living room.

“Barton, what did you do wrong?”

Clint just grins.

“More like, what did I do right?”

Darcy smirks as Tony fake gags. Thor’s laughter booms across the room.

* * *

She’s pretty sure that a pub-crawl with more than half of the Avengers probably isn’t the best idea to keep her mind off of Clint.

He’s a full-fledged superhero. He isn’t an agent anymore. But in light of recent events, like Shield turning out to be Hydra and Steve almost drowning in the Potomac and Fury going AWHOL, Coulson had asked for help. She really can’t blame Clint for wanting to help the person who helped him all those years ago. She can however be annoyed that he’s been gone for more than two weeks. She gets the safety protocols, but she doesn’t have to like it. She has left Coulson several voicemails that he only returns to ask her how she manages to keep getting his new numbers.

Apparently, _Natasha_ can be both a noun and a verb.

He did leave her with his dog though. Which was a surprise, but not really an unwelcome one. He’d found the poor thing rooting around in the same garbage bin he had fallen into after a particularly rough battle way before she and Jane moved into the Tower. It’s just like Clint though, taking in strays. (Only it’s usually turncoat assassins of the red headed variety.)

He was an older lab and a complete sweetheart. His name was Lucky, but Clint has taken to calling him Pizza Dog. Right now, he’s keeping Jane company in her lab. She still likes to talk things out, and Lucky like the treats that Jane gives out at random. Which leaves Darcy at a bar with Tony, Thor, Steve, Maria Hill, and Natasha.

She is actually having a pretty good time, until Steve pulls Darcy aside. She follows if only for the fact that she likes her right arm, like a lot. Steve doesn’t man handle her. He just doesn’t. At least, only when she’s in mortal danger and, from what Darcy can tell, is not now. She comes to a stop in front of him at the end of the bar near the bathrooms. It's quieter, and there are fewer people around. He looks worried and nervous. That makes Darcy worried and nervous.

“Are there some baddies coming? Did you get a call from Coulson? Do I need my taser?”

She’s reaching into her blouse to retrieve said taser when Steve catches her hand and pulls it away, nerves disappearing a little as he smiles fondly at her.

“No, nothing like that.”

She rests her hand on the edge of the bar and frowns because Steve is nervous and that makes her a little twitchy. Steve doesn’t do nervous. But he does do an adorable little blush, just at the tips of his ears. Which he is doing now as he leans in closer to talk to her.

“I don't know how to talk to women.”  
  
Darcy would laugh if he didn't look so serious. She stares at him, more like gapes at him, before she answers.  
  
“You talk to Natasha and Pepper a _ll the time_.”

He frowns at her a little.  
  
“Natasha is my teammate, and Pepper is Tony’s fiancé.”  
  
She crosses her arms over her chest and frowns.  
  
“You talk to me.”

He runs a hand through his hair.

“But you're... Darcy.”  
  
She glares at him. Because seriously? She is a fine piece of ass. She’s not trying to degrade herself because she is secure in the knowledge that she is a smart, physically attractive woman with a great personality and a killer rack to boot. She’s been hit on seven ways from Sunday since she was 14, and she still gets catcalls and double takes. She get’s triple takes damn it! Clint can back her up on this.  
  
“What? Am I not pretty enough for you?”

“No! Darcy, gosh no.”

He stops talking, and Darcy is more than happy to wait him out. He sighs.

“Clint is gonna kill me.”

He takes a breath and meets her eyes.

“Darcy, I am a man, and I have eyes. I have noticed your uhm, assets. Trust me. You are a grade A broad. And you’re not pretty. You’re gorgeous. But you’re just, Darcy. The one who punches like a Mac truck, helps me when I can't get the hang of the 21st century no questions asked, no comments made, the one who I can talk to about anything. You’re just Darcy, my Darcy, _our_ Darcy.”  
  
She rolls her eyes at the compliment, but it means a lot to her to hear that he cares about her so much. And yeah, Captain Freaking America, the eye candy that he is, just told her she was hot. Cross that off the bucket list! She smiles up at him, glad that he understands the eye roll, as he smiles right back.

“You talk to SHILED agents and the press all the time, and most of them are woman.”

He sighs.

“But that’s professional. I talk to them as Captain America.”

She watches him look at her in confusion. His eyes dart away to their table where Natasha is taking shots with Thor. Darcy turns back to Steve to remind him to cut Thor off soon because the city is going to be seriously pissed if Thor tries to tame the tigers in the zoo again (even if the freaking tigers _love_ him). He follows his eyes to Agent Hill and catches her laughing at the pair challenging themselves to another shot.  
  
"You like Maria?!"  
  
He tugs her further into the shadows as her voice pulls a few of their table’s eyes toward them.  
  
“I respect Agent Hill.”  
  
Darcy grins. She should have caught it. Maria only came along after Darcy told her Steve would be there. Steve was attentive to her all night, getting her chair out at dinner, helping her into her coat, getting her another drink at the bar.  
  
“Oh yeah, I bet you’ve been respecting her junk in the trunk all night.”  
  
“Darcy, this is serious!”

She’s sure he understands the reference. She doesn’t take his scolding to heart. She can’t with him all flustered like that. She laughs.  
  
“No, it isn’t.”  
  
She grabs him by the arms and pulls them down to his sides, stopping him from hugging them up to his chin like a defensive little turtle.  
  
“Just be you. Be your overly polite self and charm the pants off of her. If that doesn't seal the deal, just stare at her with those baby blues and look gorgeous.”  
  
She fixes his hair even though he can pretty much rock any hair cut, knowing he likes it neat.  
  
“I won’t be doing anything with her pants, Darcy!”

He actually hisses it at her, and she can’t help but to laugh and pat his cheek gently.

“Oh, you say that now.”

He looks completely scandalized, so Darcy wraps her fingers around as much of his arm and she can and squeezes.

“Sorry, Steve, but you don’t need my help. Just be you.”

With that she leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek and quick swat on the butt as she shoves him back toward the table. He glares at her, but does pull out her chair for her when they get back to their table. Tony hands her a shot, and Thor hands her a pint of beer. She wishes Clint were here, but he wouldn’t be the man Darcy loved if he didn’t go. She taps the shot on the table and drops it into her beer.

“To Clint.”

They all raise their glasses in salute, and then Tony gets his hand on a bottle of tequila.

By the time last call is made, Darcy is completely wasted. So she can't be held accountable for what she does next. She throws her arms around Maria as they walk to the curb.  
  
“He's too polite to kiss you goodnight, sooooo this is from Steve.”  
  
She grabs her and kisses her passionately, with tongue. Steve yanks her off apologizing while Tony shuffles her into a cab. He has to tell Maria goodnight from the car because Darcy is too busy stroking his goatee and asking him about buying stock in Patron and asking him to buy her a bouncy house.

* * *

When she wakes up hungover and feeling like she got ran over by Jane’s SUV, there is also a note on her forehead in Tony’s writing that says ~~Bucket List #347 _Made out with Agent Maria "Hot Lips" Hill_.~~

She can barely look at Steve when she manages to shuffle into the kitchen. It takes her a while to figure out why there isn’t coffee magically in front of her. Mostly, it is because Tony’s sill asleep, and Clint is half a world away. God, she misses him. She wallows in her misery and lack of coffee producing/acquiring boyfriend with her head on the marble island until she hears Steve clear his throat. She knows she should just get it over with, so she sits up, squares her shoulders, and apologizes.

“I am really sorry for the whole kissing thing. I will apologize to Maria, over breakfast, that I will be paying for.”

He glares and yeah, Darcy wants to go run and volunteer at a soup kitchen and adopt all the puppies in New York and donate to UNICEFF because she’s a horrible person and needs to atone for her misdoings.

“If I weren’t 100% sure I would puke, I would grovel at your feet. But In my defense, I did warn you all what tequila does to me.”

Steve forgives her after about 20 minutes of his stern glare, and, because he's a goddamn saint, he makes coffee strong enough to give even him a buzz and some toast. He even let's her watch all the crappy TV she wants with her feet in his lap while he draws. The Batman Bouncy House is surprisingly comfortable.

* * *

She apologizes to Maria Hill on Monday like she’s promised. She takes it all in stride.

“So, he wanted to kiss me goodnight. Not that you weren't a phenomenal kisser for being so drunk, but I hope he'll actually do it himself next time.”  
  
Darcy can't help but like her more.

* * *

The second Jarvis lets her know that Clint was headed back to the tower, now apart of the world again, she starts to rehearse what she was going to tell him. Their relationship was pretty open and honest. He told her as much of his past as he could bare. She shared hers. He never joked about her carrying a taser around when she hung out with actual superheroes, and he never said anything about finding one in her bedside table even if he spent most nights in her suite. There was an incident in college that scared her, and she vowed she’d never be put in that situation again.

They talked through the fact that he didn’t like to spend the whole night with her because of his nightmares and the fear that he’d accidentally hurt her (though they have been very few lately, ever since Darcy had the sword Heimdall gave her put in a display on her dresser…). Darcy explained that him just leaving made Darcy feel like a one nightstand even though she knew it wasn’t like that. They compromised. If he didn’t feel comfortable spending the night, he’d go back to his room but leave Lucky with her.

She never asked him to wear his hearing aids all the time, and instead started to take some ASL classes. The first time she signed with him he had looked shocked and so happy. They were together in every way that they could. The topic of other people, of doing anything intimate with other people, had never come up. They should have talked about it. With his line of work, whatever he had to do to come back to her whole and hearty… She’d make peace with it.

She had it down perfectly. She was ready to have a calm, rational discussion with him. That’s why the second she sees him she just blurts it out. Word vomit at it’s finest.

“I made out with Maria Hill! Don’t be mad!”

He just tosses his duffle bag on the chair by the door and leans down to pet Lucky. He’s so excited his whole body is shaking. Clint looks up as he scratches behind the lab’s ears.

“Why the hell would I be mad?”

Darcy flounders for words. Clint watches her carefully as he makes his way over to sit on the coffee table in front of her. He doesn’t move any closer. Darcy pulls her knees closer to her chest.

“Because I made out with someone while you were off risking your life!”

Clint shrugs. Darcy flings her hand out in front of her. Clint grabs then and holds them gently, mostly so she won’t smack herself in the face.

“You did it because you were lonely?”

She glares at him.

“No, I was drunk, and I was trying to help out Steve! Even if I was lonely, that doesn’t excuse me cheating on you! That is not okay, Clint.”

He frowns and pulls her closer to him. She goes easily.

“Okay, just so we are on the same page, we are in a completely monogamous rela-”

Darcy interrupts him.

“Except if your cover is in danger-”

He tightens his hands around hers gently.

“We are in a completely monogamous relationship, _regardless_ the status of my missions, because we love each other, and we can’t see ourselves with anyone else, and we are committed to this, to us.”

He kisses her knuckles before continuing.

“And we can forgive each other from making mistakes like not talking about our relationship and what it means to us before one of us falls off the face of the world for a while.”

She rolls her eyes but pulls his hand to her so she can kiss his knuckles. He looks surprisingly bashful about it too.

“We good?”

She nods and plays with his hands before smiling up at him.

“Now that I’m not freaking out over it, is it weird that I’m kind of proud of it? Like Maria is a badass, and if she didn’t want it to happen, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Clint shrugs.

“Eh, I kissed Coulson once.”

Darcy considers it for a moment.

“He any good?”

Clint laughs and leans toward her on the couch, pulling her legs onto his lap as he sits next to her.

“Sure, but I’m better.”

She grins and cradles his jaw. He’s sporting a beard. That means he’d come to see her right after his debriefing. He didn’t stop for a change of clothes or shower he’d missed her that much. It makes her grin widen.

“I don’t know. You’ve been gone so long. Remind me?”

“I can do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long!
> 
> P.S. I bumped this up to 22 chapters because I honestly don't want it to end. There are just too many things that I want to write!


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little filler that I just could not let go.

He can say that ever since he joined up with the Avengers life has been a lot more interesting. After all the shit he’s put them through (Steve through), he’s freaking glad they even let him on the team. It’s nice to have a place and to be useful again. Right now he’s running a covert extraction while the rest of the Avengers are fighting the Big Bad of the Week. Bucky would say distracting, but Thor's making a lot of stuff go boom, and he’s looking really pleased about it all. 

Hell, Bucky would probably enjoy blowing a few things up if some wacko kidnapped his girl. He’s finally gotten onto the rooftop where said wacko is running this sideshow. Bucky’s asset is behind a portable screen and keyboard set up that he’d hazard to guess was making all the little flying toasters (plasma drones, _whatever_ Stark) wreak havoc all over Uptown.

He has the scientist, ranting and raving with his back completely unprotected, in his sights when the brunette behind the screen flops a dismissive hand in his direction. Bucky pauses for a second, but pushes closer. He’d know if somebody was sneaking up on him, and he isn’t incompetent enough to ever let that happen anyway.

What he gets next is her dragging her hand across her throat with a pointed look in his direction, as if she can see through the heavy black shadows the building casts over him to lend him cover. This time Bucky really does stop.

Did the asset just? Did the asset just make the kill motion at him? She did. Bucky pauses to think. He was sure that no one saw him enter the rooftop, let alone the building. It was kind of his job not to be noticed. He lowers his rifle.

“Huh.”

Stark’s voice pings in his hear.

“Huh? _Huh_ , what? You got Jane yet? ‘Cause Thor is getting kind of…”

A lightning bolt crashes into the street below and the thunder that follows makes his ear ring through the comm.

“Sparky,” Stark finishes lamely.

Bucky ignores him to slink closer, hugging corners and hiding in the shadows, ignoring her command. He lets the conversation between the asset and the raving lunatic destroying parts of the city with his robotic minions wash over him. She is his priority. And his priority is rolling her eyes behind the maniac’s back like it’s a regular day at the office. 

She’s still typing at the computer as the scientist goes on and on about something or another. Suddenly, the asset perks up. Her shoulders are no longer slumping, and Bucky swears her teary eyes are clear as day when she turns to the once brilliant scientist with a wicked grin.

“So that’s how you turn it off? Cool, thanks.”

She then takes the keyboard she had been using and slams it into the side of his face. He goes limp and hits the ground hard. The asset just picks up the bag that had been thrown carelessly to the roof deck and makes her way toward him. Bucky just blinks. Out of all the ways he'd thought this would go, this definitely isn't one of them.

“God, I didn’t think he’d ever get to the point. Do all bad guys like to monologue like this?”

Bucky shrugs and holsters his gun. He usually doesn’t let them get much further than taking a breath to let out a surprised gasp.

“How’d you buy so much time for an extraction?”

He watches as she kicks off the heels she had been wearing and pulls out a pair of boots, standard issue SHIELD combat boots, but the Hello Kitty glitter laces really jazz them up. He is also starting to assume that she isn’t actually the real asset. The fact that she looks nothing like the picture he'd seen kind of helps backup that point.

“Cried a little, flashed him the girls a bit, pulled a bit of a Penelope and erased the codes I input when his back was turned.”

She shoves the heels in her bag and stands up straight, meeting his eyes dead on. Not many people can do that when faced with the Winter Soldier.

“I’m Darcy by the way. Jane’s actually locked in a closet on her floor in the tower. Somebody should probably let her out,” she looks around at the powerful storm swirling around them, “and tell Thor.”

He snorts, “I don’t think that would calm him down much.”

She offers him a warm smile and her hand. He takes it with a smirk.

“James Barnes, but you can call me Bucky, Doll.”

Her handshake, firm and welcoming, turns fierce and powerful. She uses the grip on his hand to pull him closer the exact moment he wraps an arm around her to pull her against him. He feels her hand at the small of his back as she pulls one of his knives free. He can hear it lodge into a whirring robot behind them as his bullet blows one up in front of them.

He leans away to look at her. She’s beaming up at him. She’s got a hell of a smile and, as he glances behind him to the destroyed robot, damn good aim. She ain’t hard to look at either.

“Damn sugar, you rationed?”

She laughs.

“Yes, actually.”

She doesn’t actually pull away from him. He frowns. It only makes her smile wider.

“Red is totally not your color in this context.”

She juts her chin up at his forehead. Now that he isn’t distracted, he can feel the weight of someone watching him. Snipers can always tell when they’ve got a line up. Bucky grins and loosens his hold on her.

“So I finally get to meet Barton’s girl?”

She rolls her eyes and starts walking toward the roof access door. He turns, after a quick scan of the area and a nod to Barton covering their six from a rooftop close by and follows her.

“I think I know how to turn off the signal that’s running those little robotic soccer balls,” she looks over her shoulder as she holds the door open long enough for him to catch it and follow her through, “if not I figured a good left hook from you will take care of it.”

Bucky grins and speaks quietly into his comm.

“Barton, you either marry her or I will.”

He can hear the slide and release of an arrow. It kind of sounds like a smile.

“Working on it.”


	21. Chapter 21

She mentions in passing that she’d love to go see a Mets game, so when she finds herself in a suite overlooking the stadium, she is kind of excited and floored and just a tiny little bit unhappy. She tries not to let it show as Tony digs into a gourmet hot dog topped with everything, even a white truffle sauce. This is above and beyond what she expected, and she is completely grateful, but… Tony catches the small downturn of her lips and frowns.

“Hey kiddo, what’s up?”

She shrugs, but he doesn’t let it go.

“What? Is it because I’m a Yankee’s fan?”

She grins at him. She knew that already, and yeah, no huge shocker there. But he is wearing royal blue and orange, so that’s way more than enough for her. He’s been trying to be the best dad for her, and it's surprisingly easy for him because he’s already everything she wanted a dad to be; kind, thoughtful, and always available when she needs him. He’s also been overly eager to spend time with her since she’s living and working in the tower now. She think's it's really sweet. Like hell she’s ever going to let him know that though. He doesn’t need an even bigger ego. But he’s not letting up on the questioning, and there are already two outs in the first inning.

“It’s just that I didn’t expect to be in a suite. I mean I knew I would be- it’s nothing. It’s great, Tony. Really.”

He puts his hotdog down and wipes his fingers on a napkin. He motions for the attendant to come over and speaks to him quietly. He gives the man a firm handshake before he wanders over to Darcy and throws an arm around her. He won’t tell her anything, but she grins at him as they make their way to the lower level, past what seems to be a family being escorted up to their suite. He lets him put his ball cap on her head as he leads her to seats a few rows above home plate. He manages to snag them a couple of beers from a passing vendor as they settle in.

“Better?”

She bumps his shoulder with hers trying to stop the grin on her face.

“You didn’t have to.”

He grins right back at her.

“Of course I did! Now some kids get to watch a game in a badass private suite with all the amenities, and I get to watch a ball game with my girl in the sweet seats. I call this a win, win.”

She hugs him, and it startles a laugh out of him. They turn to watch the game, and they get to for a while. The seventh inning is almost over when a little boy comes up to Tony. He glances over his shoulder as his parents smile down at him from a few rows up and over.

“Mr. Stark, I hope you don’t mind, but could you sign my mitt for me?”

Darcy watches as Tony smiles and waves up to his parents.

“You’ve got some good manners there, buddy. I can’t say no to someone asking so politely. I just need a pen or something.”

Darcy hands him the little mini permanent marker she’s gotten used to carrying for Jane from her keychain.

He scribbles a little saying, _manners and a smile will get you everywhere_ , which is completely ironic coming from him and his signature. Darcy gives the little boy a friendly smile. He grins up at Iron Man and clutches the mitt to his chest, says thanks, and rushes back to his parents. They get one or two more kids before security tightens down. Darcy has a feeling it might be more than just stadium security because she sees an agent that she’s sure she’s seen in the SI facility in California. Luckily, the people around them are being pretty chill about having a superstar Avenger in their midst, but Darcy can hear the whole stadium murmuring. She is sure to be extra loud when the Mets score because they deserve the attention. The people around her seem to get that too and yell right along with her.

It’s not until the bottom of the eighth during a player change out when they do the kiss cam. And it’s so cheesy that Darcy has to turn to Tony and tell her all about they time she got stuck on the kiss cam back in New Mexico with a blind date from hell, and she ended up kissing the old man next to her on the cheek instead. That’s when the whole stadium goes quiet and then erupts in noise. They both look up to the huge jumbotron to see their confused faces. Tony smirks and rolls his eyes, but Darcy goes from 0 to pissed in seconds.

She knows this is going to be all over the news. But she doesn’t give a shit. Because she is so not letting people think that they are together because she is with Clint, and Tony is so far from sexually attractive to her and available (hello, everyone knows he’s with Pepper!) that she stands, pulls off her cap, and motions to Tony sitting next to her with it.

“He’s not my boyfriend! He’s my _dad_!”

The silence that falls around them is louder than the voices. Tony stands up and wraps an arm around her, still on the jumbo screen, and yells.

“GO METS!”

He forces her to sit. Then her rational mind comes back online.

“Aw, crap.”

She can hear his phone starting to go off and feels hers start to vibrate in her pocket. But Tony ignores it to give her a wide happy grin.

“You just called me dad! On national tv!”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to the game that is picking back up after the initial shocks of things. She bet some cameraman and his producer either just lost their jobs or got a raise. She doesn’t know. But she does know one thing.

“Let’s finish watching the game and go eat our last meal before we go home and have Fury, Coulson, and Pepper jumping down our throats.”

He throws an arm over the back of her chair still grinning at her.

“You are so my kid.”

* * *

Later that evening, they pull up to the tower to a surprisingly reserved mob of press and media. Pepper is standing at the entrance of the tower with a smile. Darcy and Tony make their way up to her. She gives Tony a disappointed stare, but give him a kiss on the cheek before pulling Darcy into a hug. When Darcy pulls back, it is to Pepper's private smile. It reads, _Didn’t you think I’d have a plan for this?_ God, Darcy loves Pepper.

The press refusing to believe that they aren’t pulling some kind of cover up? Darcy doesn’t love that so much. They’ve been refuting rumors for the past half an hour. All Darcy wants is a hot shower and Clint. The fifth time Christine Everhart brings up an alleged love-child of Stark and a one night stand in BFE is when Darcy finally cracks.

She calmly walks up to the microphone podium and gives the crowd of reporters a warm smile.

“Let’s put this to rest once and for all, shall we?”

Then, on national TV and with all of Manhattan as her witness, she yanks a piece of hair from her head and leans over to do the same to Tony.

“Ow, Darcy! Geeze!”

Darcy rolls her eyes but pushes forward and through the mob of reporters. The media flock after her and follow her all the way down the block to the free clinic around the corner. The receptionist doesn’t even look shell shocked. It is New York after all. She’s probably seen weirder.

“Hi, how may I help you?”

Darcy smiles and presents the hair strands.

“How long would it take for you to process a DNA test? We,” Darcy inclines her head to the men and women and ridiculous volume of cameras behind her, “don’t mind waiting.”

The girl smiles as the media goes absolutely ape shit.

In three hours’ time, the media get their confirmation, Darcy gets to give them the metaphorical finger, and Clint can’t stop replaying Tony’s absolutely shocked face from the jumbotron clip.

“Babe, look at his face. Just look at it!”

Darcy rolls her eyes and tugs the remote from his grasp to turn it off. It wasn’t funny then, and it isn’t funny now.

“Thank you for thinking anyone dating me is hilarious.”

She tries to get up, but he wraps those strong arms around her waist. She elbows him sharply in the gut, but he doesn’t let go.

“Anyone else but me dating you makes me feel as sick as he looks in that clip.”      

And damn him for saying sappy shit like that. He knows she loves it. She sighs but settles into him. He presses a kiss to her temple knowing that he’s forgiven, for now.

“You’re going to have to stop giving Tony shit if you actually want his blessing.”

That, that gets Clint sitting as still as stone. Darcy smiles to herself. Clint pulls her closer.

“You’ve always known that this is always where I was headed, where I wanted us to be headed.”

She turns to him and cups his face, studying those steady blue eyes. She kisses him softly.

“It’s where I want us to be headed too,” she stands as she gives him a wide grin, “but if you keep dragging ass, I am going to take Bucky up on his offer. He wants us to elope in Paris.”

The picture she has Jarvis take of Clint’s jaw hanging open ends up as a meme and spreads rapid fire throughout SHIELD. Tony has it framed and put up in the common room. Only Pepper talks him out of putting it in the lobby.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end.

“I’m honestly surprised this hasn’t happened sooner.”

The goons that grabbed her off the street don’t say anything. She hadn’t expected them to. She just tends to talk when she’s nervous, and when she needs some kind of distraction while she takes in her surroundings as much as she can. She shifts in her seat and quietly flexes her wrists against the zip ties again. They are at least a fourth of an inch thick. There’s no way to break them without drawing attention to herself. There is also the fact that there is a black fabric bag over her head, and she can’t see anything. The bump the van hits has her titling sharply over to the right. The goons are talking quietly to themselves up ahead. She tries to scoot closer to the door when a hand clamps down hard on her shoulder. Ah, she thought there was a third one.

“But really? It took four guys to take down a 5’4” girl?”

She smiles when the entire vehicle goes dead silent. She knew that somebody else had to be idling in the car, a van by the echo-y sound of it, waiting while two of the thugs grabbed her and the other got the doors. It’s nice to have her deduction confirmed.

“That’s pathetic. Your boss must not have much faith in you, boys.”

She laughs at the silence that consumes the vehicle if only to cover up the sound of her jacket moving as her hand grasps the door handle. It’s worth a shot.

“I mean come on. Either they really don’t think you could get the job done or you’ve all had some… performance issues in the past.”

The silence goes a little bit more weighted. Darcy grins and keeps on talking. If they lose their cool, they are more likely to make a mistake. And she knows exactly what to say to make macho men angry.

“Came a little too early on a job? Maybe left a few too many unsatisfied customer behind? Or you just couldn’t perform in the first place?”

She dodges the fist meant for her, can feel air rush pass the bag over her head, instead she falls backward, yanking on the door handle. The door pops just as she manages to land her foot in someone’s chest with a kick that slams him into the opposite window. She tries to pull herself up and into a ball to minimize the impact of the fall, but a hand wraps around her ankle like a vice grip. She kicks out with everything she’s got. It’s useless as another pair of arms grabs her and hauls her back into the car.

Even expecting the punch coming doesn’t lessen the blow.

* * *

When she blinks awake everything is blurry and unfocused until fingers brush against her temples and her glasses are put back on her face. She jerks back, fighting off the wave of dizziness, and silently prays that if she pukes, she pukes on the asshole that orchestrated her kidnapping and not on herself. She does notice that she still has her purse with her though it’s a little light. She’s missing her cellphone and Starkpad and her keys, but the important things are still there. The kidnapper gets her attention by offering her an ice pack.

“I would like to start off with an apology. That did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, but you’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

Darcy gets her head to clear enough to start looking around the... bank vault? The man in the sharp suit must notice her looking because he gestures to the room at large.

“You’re wondering where you are? We’re at one of my compounds. In one of my fallout bunkers, actually. Completely state of the art, NBC air filtration systems, Co2 scrubbers, two backup generators, and all the high-tech electronics and gadgets you could ever need. The wifi is a bit tricky, but other than that it has all the comforts of home. And it has the added bonus of blocking any tracking devices you might still have on or,” he gives her a leering once over, “in your person.”

Darcy doesn’t look down at the bracelet on her wrist. Instead, she watches as the man pulls out a slender, over large phone. He sets in on the table and taps it with his fingers.

“This room is completely secure. The only way in and out of this room is with this phone. But who would want to leave this room when you’re in it?”

Darcy’s stomach turns.

“I mean wow, aren’t you a looker. Really, even with the shiner starting up. Pictures do not do you justice.”

Darcy clenches her jaw and fights off the tide of nauseous that rises with his words. The fancy meal laid out on the table, complete with candles and flowers, doesn’t help. She drops the ice pack to the table with a plop. He studies the said shiner carefully.

“Rodrigo did get reprimanded. Men should never raise a hand to a woman.”

Darcy sneers at him.

“How chivalrous of you.”

The man grins and takes the seat across form her at the small, very well decorated table.

“I have many fine qualities.”

“Oh, is kidnapping one of them too?”

He laughs as he pours them each a glass of white wine.

“I knew you’d be witty! You’d have to be to keep up with Tony Stark.”

Darcy just stares him down until he lowers the glass he holds out to her to the table. He sighs.

“We can do this the easy way, Miss Lewis. Or…”

He shifts in his seat to look back at something on the low bench against the wall behind him. There is a box there. It has the black hood, more zip ties, duct tape, and who knows what else. Darcy picks up the fork and pushes it against the plate to make a scraping sound. The man smiles and adjusts his glasses.

“Can I at least know why I was kidnapped?”

He smiles at her. It makes her stomach churn. For someone in such an expensive suit, all he comes off as is sleazy.

“You see, when you go after an enemy, you don’t really go after them. You go after their legacy.”

He swirls the wine is his glass as he looks at her.

“Now, I know you aren’t his biological daughter, but that is even better for me. Tony chose you once, he’ll choose you again.”

He puts his glass down to pick up his fork. Darcy is contemplating throwing her drink in his face, but curbs her anger by sheer force of will.

“All you need to do is say what I say, ask what I ask for, and you’ll be in that nice cozy tower of yours quick as can be.”

He spears a piece of something that resembles a carrot on his fork.

“Any questions so far?”

Darcy smiles at the man in the slim fitting suit in front of her.

“Just one, who the hell are you?”

He chokes on the maybe-carrot.

“You, you don’t know who I am?”

Darcy pretends to think it over and rolls her eyes.

“Not at all.”

The suit leans over his plate.

“Tony has never mentioned me? At all?”

Darcy pokes at the fancy mush on her plate. It looks like an abstract painting and not even food.

“Nope.”

The man gapes and sputters.

“I’m Justin Hammer! I’m Stark’s competition, his only competition! How do you not know about me!?”

Darcy shrugs, “You never came up.”

“Never came up? _Never_ came up?!”

She grips the fork securely in her right hand and shifts in her seat enough to balance herself and to see the edge of a black suit standing just outside the partially closed bunker door.

“I’ll be sure to tell him all about you once I get out of here.”

She only pauses long enough to see a look of confusion settle on his face.

She jams the fork into his hand effectively pinning it to the table. The flat of her hand coming up to his throat silences his yell neatly, temporarily immobilizing his vocal chords like Natasha taught her. Darcy slams her hand on the screen of his phone he stupidly left out on the table, sealing them into the panic room together. The guards outside have no time to even react. She pulls the taser out of her purse, stashed in the same small pouch as a few tampons, and holds it to Hammer’s neck.

“My boyfriend is the greatest marksman in the world, and on top of that, he’s a badass spy. His best friend is also a badass spy. She is so badass that the whole country of Russia is afraid of her.”

She flicks him in the center of his forehead to keep his attention on her as he struggles to breathe.

“My best friend’s boyfriend is the God of freaking Thunder, and he kind of thinks of me as a sister. Dr. Bruce Banner, who you might also know as the goddamn Hulk, gets touchy when you threaten his friends. Captain America is, for all intents and purposes, my big brother which also makes the Winter Soldier my big brother by association.”

Darcy pushes her taser harder into Hammer’s neck as he gulps like a fish.

“And even though he kind of forced it on me, Tony Stark is my _dad_. I know how to protect myself, but the Avengers taught me a few things like the jugular move you’re enjoying so much right now. If you’re trying to kidnap a girl to fit your completely bullshit damsel in distress stereotype, make sure that she's actually gonna play the part you pretentious, ignorant douchebag!”

She hits him with the taser and doesn’t let up until he’s flopping on the floor. She pushes the table away hearing Clint’s voice in her head.

_Clear line of sight between you and your target. Don’t let them have any chance to surprise you._

The next thing she does is make sure she empties his pockets of everything.

 _Don’t give them a weapon_. _Remember even a shield can be a weapon if it needs to be._

She thinks Steve will forgive her for not taking his shoe laces. She does take off his watch for good measure and smashes it under her heel before she kicks the remains toward the far wall. Tony is like Macgyver when he wants to be and, even if Justin Hammer is a lackluster wannabe, Darcy isn’t playing around. She places a chair about ten feet away and tries to channel the cool calm that Bucky always seems to have.

 _Always_ _just_ _out of reach, always enough space to escape if you need to, doll._

She slides a finger across his phone to unlock the screen and ignores the dull thuds against the metal door. They aren’t getting through anytime soon.

“It’s not even password protected? Fucking asshole.”

She taps out Clint’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail. She starts to call Tony and remembers that he never keeps the same number for long. That’s going to change after this. She dials and waits. She almost grins at the hasty answer.

“Darcy?”

“Hey, Steve. Could you put me on speaker?”

It’s good to know he listens to her and kept his phone on him even in uniform. She can hear voices and shuffling before she hears Tony clearly.

“Sorry, Cap. You were moving way too slow.”

She can hear someone being shoved before she hears Clint. She sags back into her chair as her eyes close as she drinks in his voice. It’s steady, but there is an edge of panic at the end. The same panic she can hear in Tony’s voice.

“Darcy, we’re coming to get you.”

She watches Hammer twitch on the floor.

“I know. But listen, when they grabbed me they were talking, about traffic and construction and the turnpike. I think-”

Natasha speaks up now.

“You’re in New Jersey. There’s a tracker in your taser.”

She wants to roll her eyes because of course Tony put one in it, but instead she laughs a little over the line.

“And there’s a tracker in my bracelet.”

She can almost picture Clint’s eyebrows twitch in embarrassment.

“We’re a minute out. Can you tell us where he has you?”

There is no emotion in the words. She can hear the steel in his voice. Hawkeye is in control right now. That terrifies her. She doesn’t want to be the one that triggers that in him, the soldier, the assassin. But it is also a complete turn on to be the center of that focus, the reason for it.

“I need a psych eval.”

The voices on the other end of the line go dead quiet. It’s Tony that speaks. His voice is hard, harder than she’s ever heard it. It makes her shoulders tense. A chill runs down her spine at the darkness in his tone.

“Did he hurt you?”

She can hear Natasha speak in Russian softly. Darcy knows she’s speaking to Clint because Nat, Bucky, and Clint are the only ones that understand Russian fluently. She immediately wants to hit herself for speaking without thinking. Clint’s probably standing still as stone, eyes wild with the promise of pain, panicked at the thought of her hurt, in pain, tortured, raped.

“NO! _No_. He never laid a finger on me, Clint. He never touched me. Some Rodrigo guy got a good crack to my jaw in, but I’m okay. Clint, Tony, guys, I’m okay. I’m fine.”

No one is speaking now and that makes Darcy nervous. Because that means the others aren’t talking which means they thought the worse, or are so pissed that they can’t talk. She feels horrible for making them worry like that. A calm, low voice comes clearly over the line.

“Darce, you need to tell us about where you are.”

She takes a breath and is surprised that it’s a little ragged. She focuses on Bucky’s steady breathing and thinks.

“In some panic room, I think? He was bragging about it being a secure bunker. Then he tells me how only his phone can open or close it. Then he leaves it right there on the table. God, he is such a pompous ass.”

Tony’s laugh relieves some of the tightness in her chest.

“That’s my girl.”

“Where’s Hammer?”

At Steve’s question, she goes over and nudges him with his foot. He’s still out cold, and his breathing is a bit labored due to the damage to his throat. The fork is still stuck in his hand.

“He met the wrong end of my taser and is napping in a pool of his own blood and drool. I locked us in here, but I can’t figure out how to get out. It’s some bastardized tech thing! Tony, I get why you hate this douchewad.”

“Just sit tight, kiddo. Don’t try to open it until we tell you. You’ll see us in ten.”

She hears Natasha correct Tony harshly.

“You’ll see us in five.”

She can feel the panic start again because these are her friends about to go up against who knows what for her while she gets to sit in a secured room, in safety. Clint realizes it because his voice is louder now, like he has the phone.

“Darce, I’m going to get you out of there. But I’m gonna need both hands for this.”

She hears Bruce’s voice now, low in the background. “ _We’re all gonna need both hands for **this**_ **.** ”

She shivers at the thought of Bruce on the verge of the shift. It still scares her.

“Tony’s gonna pass the call to Jarvis alright, sweetheart?”

She nods but realizes they can’t see her. She takes a deep breath.

“Okay.”

Clint’s voice is quieter now.

“Darcy, I love you.”

She smiles into the phone and bites her cheek to stop the tears. Because Clint is going to be there in minutes, and he’s going to be fine. They all are. But she can’t help replay in her head what she saw at Jane’s old lab when the Avengers fought against Hammer and Doom at Doom’s hideout.

“I love you too. I love all you guys. Even Tony.”

Then there’s a second when the line goes dead silent, and she panics. She starts to gather a scream in her lungs, Clint’s name on her tongue, when she hears Tony’s voice coming over the speaker. She reigns it back in.

“I love you too, kiddo.”

She laughs a little, expelling the air, but it settles hard in her stomach. So she settles for tasering Hammer again just for good measure.

“That sounds like a taser, young lady. I knew you’d like it.”

She sits back down and lets the smiles she tries out on her face waver. He doesn’t give a shit if she tasers Hammer’s brain into mush. But he cares that she’s the one doing it. Even if he’s joking with her, he’s still chiding her. He doesn’t want any blood on her hands. She takes a deep breath and shrugs.

“It’s a good taser.”

She hears Natasha’s voice in his suit, shouting something about robots, and Darcy sits upright in her chair and halfway strains to hear the explosion, stomach in clenches.

“JARVIS, block all Avengers transmissions from the call.”

Darcy tries to protest, but he cuts her off with that authoritative voice again.

“You don’t need to hear this, Darcy.”

She slumps in her chair with her fingers tight around the metallic purple metal of the taser.

“You make sure they all come back with all ten-”

Tony picks up her joke with Steve easily.

“Toes and fingers functioning and accounted for. Got it.”

She hears him take a sharp breath and curse. She yells at the phone.

“That means you too you idiot!”

He chuckles, “Yes, ma’am.”

She strains her ears listening to the change in Tony’s breathing, the uneasy flow of words as he takes a hit or delivers a blow. Darcy nearly walks over to Hammer to tase him again when Tony cuts off mid sentence and comes back on agonizing seconds later with a quick breathless joke about taking a detour through a wall. She jumps as something hard hits the metal of the door.

“Dacry, I’m going to need you to stand back from the door.”

She doesn’t ask why. She just moves as far away from the door as she can. She watches as the hinges start to glow bright orange, then red, and white. They turn to liquid and the vault door falls outward and is rolled to the side.

Iron Man walks in and takes a look around, checking for threats. Darcy shakily puts the phone down on the table.

“I’m going to need you to get out of that suit.”

The suit looks like it’s about to catch on fire. There are gaping holes in the metal like he’s caught it on something and ripped away huge chunks of it. Her throat gets tight.

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m going to hug you, old man.”

He’s out of the suit within seconds and has Darcy tucked safely under his chin. Her fingers grasp at the fabric of his black shirt and hugs him so tightly she thinks she might break him.

“Awe babydoll, I didn’t know you cared.”

She sniffles and wipes her tears on his shirt. He hugs her back fiercely with one hand starting to rub smooth circles into her back.

“Hey. Hey, come on, kiddo. Your okay.”

Darcy nods her head into his shoulder where it rests tucked close to his neck so no one else can see her starting to lose it.

“I know. I’m just happy you’re okay. You’re kinda of the only dad I have.”

Tony hugs her hard then spins her around in order to put her behind him to aim a quickly called repulsor at the door. Clint barrels in, completely ignoring Tony’s protective stance, and makes a beeline for Darcy. He crowds in close to her and takes her face gently in his hands. He looks her over swiftly, honing in on the already purpling welt on her cheek. 

“Christ, Darcy.”

He wraps his arms around her and holds onto her as tightly as he dares. His uniform isn’t made for comfort, but she doesn’t care. He’s muttering her name softly under his breath as she holds onto him with everything she has. The sound of Tony’s phone camera going off has them pulling apart just enough to watch him take picture of Justin Hammer twitching in the floor. He looks proud… and oddly gleeful.

“Clint, maybe give Darcy some breathing room?”

They hadn’t noticed Steve walking in. Darcy’s hand spasms against Clint’s. He pulls her closer into his side almost the same instant she steps flush against him. He’s the only thing keeping her from shaking apart right now. Clint motions to where Hammer is. The Avengers don’t seem to care about Hammer’s wellbeing or comfort.

“I let her go, and I’m liable to put an arrow in that asshole.”

Tony shrugs.

“And that’s a bad thing?”

Steve gives up the ghost and rolls his eyes. He doesn’t try to order Clint away from her again though. And he starts to keep a closer eye on Tony. Bucky nudges one of Hammer’s legs and point at the fork still in his hand.

“Your handiwork, doll?”

She nods.

“Remembered the story you told me about Rebecca and that date at the diner that was getting too fresh with her.”

Bucky grins.

“Atta girl.”

Then Natasha comes in with empty Widow bracelets and a wicked grin. The ground shakes around them.

“Looks like the Hulk figured out where Rodrigo was hiding.”

Darcy starts to ask how Natasha found Rodrigo with only his name, but stops herself. She actually doesn’t want to know. She does want to get home as soon as possible though. She takes a deep breath, slaps on something that feels like a determined grin, and squeezes Clint’s hand.

“Last one to the Quinjet has to tell Thor?”

Steve huffs, but he also hogties Hammer and starts to drag him out of the room.

* * *

Once they land at the Tower, it is a whirlwind of activity. Everyone is debriefed. Coulson rains down fury on those responsible for the kidnapping, Jane threatens to toss the SHIELD agents that didn’t report the glitch in their comms into space portals, and Happy tears the SHIELD driver that was late to pick Darcy up a new one. He nearly gives himself a heart attack over it, and Darcy nearly breaks one of his ribs from hugging him so hard.

She goes to therapy. She talks to Sam. She ruins exactly one of his shirts with her snot and mascara stained tears. That’s all she will allow herself. She slaps makeup on the fading bruise and goes back to work. She even goes back to the coffee shop and orders a salted caramel mocha for herself without having a panic attack.

She handles it, pushes it out of her head, and gets back to her life. Clint doesn’t hover over her. He trusts her to take care of herself, but he holds her when a nightmare hits out of the blue and rubs away the ghost of hands around her ankles. The next night the sword Heimdall made for her is back in her bedroom. Bucky said he didn’t need it anymore. (Darcy knows bullshit when she hears it. That’s why she goes behind his back and asks Thor to commission Heimdall to make one for Bucky.)

It’s nearly three months later when Tony finds the video that Hammer took of his “interrogation” of Darcy. She humors him and takes the giant bowl of popcorn he offers when he announces that it will be replacing _Batman Begins_ for movie night. Clint tucks her into his left side and surprisingly Bucky takes up the spot on her left side and offers his metal hand to her. She takes it and squeezes.

What Darcy was expecting… isn’t what happens. She expects tension and quiet anger from the Avengers. 

“Screw little league trophies and Honor Student bumper stickers. I got a video of my kid kicking major ass!”

The video immediately opens to her waking up. Natasha makes approving sounds as Darcy covertly takes in the room, finds all the points of entry and exit, find the weaknesses, and finds a weapon. Clint looks like he wants to set Hammer on fire with his eyes.

Bucky grins when he sees the fork trick first hand. Tony pauses the video soon after, flailing madly at the screen.

“Did she just call me dad? To Hammer? SHE CALLED ME _DAD_! TO FUCKING HAMMER!”

Tony dives over the coffee table to scoop her up into an energetic hug. He pulls back quickly to smack a kiss to her forehead.

“I’ve got to tell Pepper and Rhodey and Happy!”

They watch as he goes grinning from the room. Natasha rolls her eyes but throws Darcy a sly grin.

“The whole country isn’t afraid of me. Just the mob, and the arms dealers, and the government, and well, yes. Pretty much all of Russia.”

Bucky juts his chin at her with a proud grin.

“It ain’t by association, doll. You’re an honorary Barnes.”

Steve’s stern smile goes lopsided and goofy before he leans over Clint to ruffle her hair affectionately. Bruce just gives her a smile and a gentle huff from the corner. Apparently, he doesn’t feel the need to correct her. Thor booms with laughter.

“Lady Darcy! My Shield Sister! You are truly a warrior of Asgard!”

Then Tony comes back in with Sam in tow, and it's hours later, after he has pulled her aside to talk privately (and bless him and bless Tony too for calling him in because Darcy really needed to talk to him, will probably need to talk about _it_ for a while, not just try to push past it) that she finally makes it back to their room.

Clint is sitting up waiting for her. He smiles as she makes her way toward him on the bed. This is his _I want to talk to you about something_ set up. The last time he used this particular tactic it was to break it to her that he had fleas, and they weren’t from Lucky. 

But it’s something in the way he holds himself, the set of his jaw, that has her standing a little bit taller.

“I kind of lost it when the call came in. If Coulson hadn’t intervened…”

He stops, takes a breath, and starts again.

“They said we shouldn’t prioritize you over anyone else because you aren’t actually related Tony. Legally, you are an adult, and he’s only your father on paper, and I’m just…me.”

Darcy leans forward and takes his face in her hands, but he pulls away. Her heart lurches in her chest.

“They took you, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. I was terrified out of my mind, and if the other’s hadn’t cared about you so much, Darcy… I don’t think we could have found you so quickly, even if I went rouge.”

Darcy can only watch helplessly as her heart sinks to the floor.

“Seeing it again tonight, I don’t ever want to go through that again, Darcy. I won’t.”

Her throat is tight and hot with unshed tears. She barely catches onto what was he is even saying. She barely hears anything above the static in her ears.

“I was thinking we do it here, just us. Maybe see if Coulson can officiate. And Fury owes me one, so I can get him to give Dr. Selvig a few days furlough. What do you say, Darce? Make a honest man out of me?”

She smacks him so hard upside his head that her hand stings. Clint rubs at the spot and gives her a wry grin.

“The hell, Clint!? I thought we were breaking up with me!”

She tries to storm off, but he pulls her into his lap, bears her weight against his chest, and cups her face with one broad hand.

“I’m still kind of surprised you haven’t broken up with me, to be honest. I mean I did just try to propose to you and you thought I was trying to break it off with you so...”

She rolls her eyes at his soft grin.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Barton.”

His fingers stroke against her cheek.

“Kind of my plan here, sweetheart. I want to keep you forever if you let me.”

She can feel her eyes getting teary. But Clint doesn’t seem to mind, not with his doing the same. She catches his hand in hers and kisses his calloused palm shaking her head yes until she can find the voice to say it.

“Yes, Clint. Of course, yes.”

Clint grins and leans away enough to pull out a dark blue box. He opens it one handed and holds it out to her. It is probably the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. While the princess cut diamond isn’t ostentatiously huge, it’s definitely noticeable. The part that she loves the most is that instead of the normal prongs holding the diamond securely to the band it is four detailed arrowheads. The shaft and fletchings of the arrows skirt around the tiny diamonds the main stone is set in. She can see through the space between feathers it is so delicate.

Darcy can’t even speak. She just reaches for Clint and kisses him soundly. They get lost in it for a while before she breaks away and tells him to put it on her already. Clint laughs, but obliges. It fits perfectly.

“I’ve had this thing in my pocket for nearly five months now. I damn near lost it on that Op in Istanbul. It’s why I was a few days late. I had half a black ops crew looking for the thing.”

He kisses her forehead gently as she laughs.

“And I just wanted you to remember something good especially today. I didn’t know what Tony had planned. I didn’t want today to be something dark for you.”

She shakes her head and rests it against his chest.

“As long as I have you, it is never going to be dark.”

His fingers card through her hair gently. A thought pops into her head, and she can’t help but to ask.

“So I’m guessing Tony gave you his blessing?”

“He tried to pull a Godfather on me,” Clint grins as he plays with her hair, “Dummy kind of ruined his moment by spilling motor oil all over his pants, but yeah. He gave his blessing and the name of his jeweler again.”

Darcy laughs with him, shifting up to see his face again.

“What’s the likeliness of our wedding day getting interrupted by superhero shenanigans?”

Clint snorts but shrugs.

“More than likely.”

She laughs but leans in to brush her lips against his.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And she wouldn’t. She’s gotten her 6 college credits and then some. She’s got the love of her life and a family, a father. She has a place to belong and people to love and to be loved by.

She doesn’t even care that she never got her iPod back.

She smiles into the kiss Clint pulls her into.

Not a lot at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. Thank you to all who have stuck with this story. Thank you for putting up with my insane update schedule. Thank you for leaving kind and encouraging comments. Thank you, sincerely.
> 
> This story was a labor of love, and I am sad to see it end.


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